and Grandison are amongst novels.

Of those volumes Dr Johnson justly said, "They are not only the first novels, they are amongst the first works of the English language."

You apologize for illustrating your argument by mentioning the different preference your two grand epic ballads have met in Scotland and England, and call that mention egotism. The egotism of mean minds disgusts, that of elevated ones is interesting. Rousseau was the greatest egotist existing, yet lost no reputation by that ex

cess.

On the subject of the Eve of St John, and Glenfinlas, I have found preference divided into two classes here. Amid the circles in which I have recited them, the folk, who are dead to almost all other sublime poetry, were charmed with the former, while they stared, and gave Glenfinlas but coldly acquiescent praise. Those who taste the higher orders of verse, are also charmed with the Eve of St John, but unanimously assert the superiority of the Highland poem.

If I had health and spirits to take long journies, which, alas! I have not, your invitation to Edinburgh would be resistless. I have long considered Scotland as distinguished classic ground, and the idea of being personally known to you increases its magnetism-yet, desponding grati

tude for so kind a summons, is the sole response

of my heart.

I remain, &c.

LETTER VIII.

THOMAS PARK, ESQ.

Lichfield, Sept. 27, 1802.

I HAVE to thank you for a charming letter as to talent, though of lamented intelligence respecting Mrs Park's health. So many fruitless medical experiments reduce us to helpless sympathy, and the forlorn hope, that time may subdue, or at least abate, the force of those maladies which pharmacy seems to combat in vain.

Your letter came to me the night before I set out on my summer excursion, from which I returned on Sunday. The renovation of a frame, enfeebled by accident, and impaired by time, was, as it has many years been, the chief, if not the only motive which counteracted my love of home, and dread of journeying. I hoped those good effects to my last-injured knee, which I did not find from Buxton; but it is not perceivably

strengthened by a five weeks residence on the am ber shores, the verdant, and pure-breathed downs of Hoyle Lake, nor by twenty-one immersions in its billows, subdued by peculiarity of situation to unusual gentleness.

My return home took its wonted circuit though the peerless Vale of Denbighshire, where I divided an interesting fortnight between the hospitality of my friend Mr Roberts' mansion, amid the sublimities of that scenery which, in unequaled variety, its elevation commands, and the softer graces of Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Ponsonby's enchanted bowers in the vale below, round which the warmth of their kindness, the light of their talents, and the blessings of their benevolence, stream.

Entirely do I agree with most of your opinions on the Poetical Register, concerning almost all the individual poems you praise, and on all you censure, as to admission, and arrangement in the plan of the work; but I confess I do not find in Adeline's compositions, however tuneful and correct, the vital spark, without which verse of the most flowing numbers is but a dead-letter. Mrs West's eight sonnets in this volume, concerning which you are silent, appear to me very beauti ful. The editor, Mr Davenport, writes with Mrs C. Smith's elegance, but, like her's, his

muse is too constantly in the lamentable strain. I have called Mrs C. Smith's sonnets, the everlating duns on pity; and one of my literary friends has, by a quotation, too severely, perhaps, styled her, "a puny poet, puling to the moon." That she pules with the pertinacity of a pea-hen, is certain, but we must not allow that she is puny. Your own sonnet, in the van of that department, is a very sweet one.

There is also a lovely song, signed J. N., and Dr Sewell's ode is pathetic. The six stanzas of W. Case's Descriptive Sketch, are very fine-the rest not equally striking. Most of Campbell's have considerable merit; and I have found more of merit and new name, than I have time to mention, and to praise.

Yet is your observation too just; the volume is greatly overloaded as to the number of the compositions; and the quaint poetry of ancient days has no business there, neither the terse decisions of review-criticism, whose praise and censure have no why or wherefore. The comparative quantity of mere verses, duller than the plainest prose, is sadly proponderant in this miscellany. To compile a metrical collection from different sources, is one of the most thorny paths of authorism. The rejection of offered verses is, in effect, to tell their authors, that they are mistaken in

believing themselves poets, and to make the compiler a foe in every rejected versifier. But unless he has fortitude equal to that disagreeable and personally dangerous firmness, he must not hope that his work will acquire lasting reputation.

Dodsley had interest to procure for his first and succeeding volumes, contributions from all the first poets of his day. Mr D. should not have opened his compilation till he had procured them from most of the celebrated writers now living. Some of their names, added to those few of lustre which he has obtained, would, by their value, have more than supplied the place of that shoal of versifiers who have bedimmed the tome.

If, leaning on what he did procure of genuine poetry, he had, with firm hand, lopt away the load of useless and barren shoots, this, his first volume, would probably have induced, by its reputation, other rightly-touched spirits to have adorned its successors. As it is, I am afraid the herd of vapid rhymists will make the poets turn disgusted away from such fellowship.

You recommend to my attention the latelyemerged poems of Dermody. When he was quite a boy, I received a great heap of his verses, in loose sheets, from the press. They were pretty enough for years so early; yet I discerned not in them the germs of genius. I have always con