from the ungenerous advantage he sought to take of Henry the Eighth, by breaking the peace, without provocation, when that monarch was engaged in a war with France. So deserve all the rulers of nations, who, unstimulated by recent injuries, thus unclasp" the purple testament of bleeding war."

Perhaps this voluminous intrusion on your time will be thought merciless; but it seemed to me that barren thanks, and indiscriminate praise, was an unworthy acknowledgment of the honour conferred upon me by the gift of these highly curious, and ingenious books.

A bright luminary in this neighbourhood recently shot from its sphere, with awful and deplored suddenness. Dr Darwin, on whose philosophical talents and dissertations, so ingeniously conjectural, the adepts in that science looked with admiring, if not always acquiescent respect; in whose creative, gay, luxuriant, and polished imagination, and harmonious numbers, the votaries of poetry basked delighted; and on whose discernment into the cause of diseases, and skill in curing them, his own, and the neighbouring counties reposed. He was born to confute, by his example, a frequent assertion, that the poetic fancy loses its fine efflorescence after middle life.

The Botanic Garden, one of the most highly-imaginative poems in our language, was begun after its author had passed his forty-sixth year. I have the honour to remain, Sir, &c.

LETTER IV.

REV. T. S. WHALLEY.

Lichfield, May 15, 1802.

FOUR months have passed away since I addressed you, my dear, deprived, afflicted friend. It is my hope that they have not passed without having distilled upon your heart some portion of that balm with which time assists reason and religion in their power of mitigating fruitless woe*. Conscious that repose of mind was not only desirable to you, but good for you, I have forborne thus long to inquire after your state of mind and health. Sir Walter and Lady Jane James have probably detained you in London, as the scene in

* For the death of his excellent wife, upon which the author had condoled with him in a letter, which does not appear.-S.

which your attention might most successfully be turned towards extrinsic circumstances and objects.

You inquire after my health. It was not good through the rigid and gloomy winter, and has not improved beneath the blooming renovation of the vegetable world. Rheumatism combines with the added weakness entailed upon me by the yet unrecovered accident of spring-twelvemonth, and dizziness of head, tremulous motion of heart, and difficulty of breathing when I walk, are daily returning sensations of a more threatening na

ture.

My spirits have never permanently recovered the shock of my valued friend Mr Saville's dan gerous seizure in December, and he is so frequently ill, and so imperfectly recovers that portion of his long feeble strength which his last seizure took away, that apprehension for his life sits heavy on my heart; yet, unless prevented by farther increase of disease, we have each promised to visit our friend, Mr Mitchel, in Worcestershire, that I may not quit existence without having heard the nightingale: but this gratification has been so often averted, that I begin to think its notes are sounds which destiny interdicts to my ear. Next Monday is fixed for our setting

out. I am afraid my rheumatic pains will impel my reluctant course to Buxton again this sum

mer.

These last three weeks the society of dear Mrs M. Powys, one of the few existing friends of my youth, often beguiled my attention of its anticipating fears, while we recalled the image of our lost Honora, scarcely less dear to Mrs Powys than to myself. Thus was that charming creature ideally restored to these apartments, and bowers, the scenes of her youth and happiness, and which breathe of her still. Mrs Powys left me this morning, and a letter to you was in unison with my feelings. I am but too likely to behold her no more, since our habitations are so distant. is eight years since we met.

It

His

You have doubtless seen in the papers, the late sudden death of the celebrated Dr Darwin. extinction is universally lamented, from the most operative cause of regret; and while disease may no longer turn the eye of hope upon his rescuing and restoring skill, the poetic fanes lose a splendid source of ornament; philosophic science, an ingenious and daring dictator; and medicinal art, a pillar of transcendent strength.

His son, Dr Darwin of Shrewsbury, has applied to me for assistance in furnishing materials

for a short life of this great man, which may hereafter be requested as a prelude to future editions of his works. Dr Darwin of Shrewsbury justly observes, that his father's utter dislike to all personal questions, left him entirely in the dark respecting the earlier part of his life, the twenty-four years in which he practised physic in Lichfield, and which passed beneath the unobservant eyes of his own sportive infancy and boyism. He is conscious that they must form a part of Dr Darwin's existence better known to me, who lived in habitual intimacy with him from my thirteenth year, the period in which his constellation of talents first beamed upon our city, and which illumined it so long.

I had rather this application had not been made, since my respect for the existing Dr Darwin will not let me say it nay; since the demands upon my pen are already too heavy for my health, and since that impartial display of both sides the medal, which constitutes valuable biography, may not be given by the filial hand, or presented by another to the filial eye. Dr Darwin, late of Derby, was a mixed character, illustrious by talent, professionally generous, always hospitable, kind, and charitable to the poor, sometimes friendly, but never amiable. While on abstract