LETTER XIII.

REV. R. FELLOWES.

Lichfield, June 14, 1803.

AFTER a much more than wished delay, perhaps it is in an unlucky hour that I acknowledge and thank you for a letter, interesting as are all your letters, but containing disappointing contradiction of a report, which I flattered myself had some foundation; good fortune, in prospect at least, if not in possession. To find the vision wholly baseless grieves me.

By unlucky hour, I meant the possibility that Harbury may have ceased to be your home ere this letter reaches that place, if by naming midsummer as the period of your probable removal into Suffolk, you meant the ides of this month rather than the rent-receiving period.

If you do change your habitation, may that change increase your comforts! God only knows what changes await us all before the final and constantly impending change, plunged, as we are, in the mischiefs and miseries of another war. I believe the present ministry mean well, but I fear

they have in them the seeds of those ruinous politics which influenced their predecessors. What is more surprising, the contagion now seems to have spread widely amongst those whose wiser councils, during the late contest, might, had they been taken, have saved this nation from the perils which surround it now.

I fear that, in rejecting the offered mediation of Russia, I see the plague-spot of hopless contest in their councils; and that by this step they are rendering themselves almost as reprehensible as their infatuated predecessors. To them, to their pernicious measures, is France indebted for that. power to aggrandize herself, which every nation that possesses will use.

If England could monopolize the commerce of Europe, would she not do it? If she could extend her territory would she resist the temptation? Then how more than childish the idea, that if Buonaparte could be removed from the world, or from the seat of power in France, with him the spirit which creates our jealousy would die!—It will live in the breast of his successor. Restore the Bourbons, and it would mount from the Consular seat to the throne. No experienced operation of philosophic science is more certain than the influence of national ambition.

If any degree of success to balance or to close the evils of another war at this juncture, were not'utterly hopeless; if there was the least chance that renewed hostilities could wrest from the foe that proud supremacy which former hostilities gave to his grasp, it might be wise to attempt it, at almost any price.-Since there is not, why must the nation be beggared so utterly in vain? But a truce with these heart-burning questions; they help not-they avail not.

You ask me if I have read Bloomfield's Moral Tales. Yes, but with a disappointed eye. They are as much below his principal work as Cowper's other writings are below his Task. O what idol-worship is the Hayleyan biography of that man!-of genius so unequal, of principles so unhappy!

I am charmed with what you say about the author of Gebir*, and his other projected epic.

*The sentence in Mr Fellowes' letter alluded to above.— "The author of Gebir, who lives in this neighbourhood, has lately made another attempt to convey the waters of Helicon by leaden pipes, and many dark subterranean ways, into the channel of the Avon. I have not seen these last effusions of his muse; but, having trod the dark profound of Gebir, I feel no inclination to begin another journey, which promises so little pleasure, and probably where only a few occasional flashes will enlighten the road."

The whole mass of Cowper's letters, so ostentatiously, so over-weeningly vaunted by Mr H., do not contain one passage so imaginative! Such sentences, in which your letters are so rich, teach me to exclaim in the words of Pope,

"How sweet a Prior is in Fellowes lost!"

If you should settle in Suffolk, what an honour for a peasant of that country to have rendered your daily haunts classical! Becoming your residence, another age will consider the ground doubly hallowed by sacred eloquence, and by poetic inspiration.

Cousin Henry White is justly proud of the esteem you avow for his character. His best wishes, with mine, hover around your idea. idea. He took my memoirs of Dr Darwin up to town a little time ago. Some demur has arisen since he, as we both believed, settled the business with the bookseller. Delay ensues, unfavourable to biographic composition. Above all other species of writing it is expedient that it should "catch the aura popularis" which curiosity breathes, ere it wastes and sinks in expectation. An early copy will be ordered for you. You will find your name on the leaves. I hope you will not think I have taken it in vain.-Adieu!

LETTER XIV.

DR LISTER.

Lichfield, June 20, 1803.

I AM happy to find my acknowledgment of your last kind letter so soon greets you beneath your native skies; that you have given the most alarming symptoms of your late malady to the winds and waves of the Bay of Biscay, and that they have graciously accepted the present. My pen did not pursue you to Lisbon, since your stay there was of such purposed shortness. From your account of that place, in your letters to your mother, which she has kindly shewn me, and from what Mrs M. Powys says of Oporto, we may well exclaim, What an odious country of superstition, ignorance, slavery, and filth is Portugal! The French will take it, and then with how much cant about its lost liberty shall we be pestered.

What an escape you had of being taken on your return! When you were within an hour's sail of the foe, an instantaneous and impervious mist rose on the meridian of a bright and cloudless