the convoy of every thing that is great and beautiful from the human soul;-when you profess not to consider it as a subject worth much attention, though you may now and then take a fancy to some of its effusions. The confession appears stranger still, from recollecting how often you devote the most eager attention to the frothy pages of a modern novel;-how rapturously you wrote about that to me insipid romance, the Adelaide de Courcy!

Since my last letter contained no reflections upon your want of taste for my favourite species of poetry, the grave Miltonic sonnet, I wonder you choose to villify it to me, by so uncharacteristic a definition, to call it a rough rumbling composition of fourteen lines. I flatter myself, that my ear and taste, so long devoted to the study of poetic harmonies, are incapable of liking a rough rumbling composition, whatever title it

may assume.

But why talk I of these matters to one who professes herself indifferent about them? The round of company and dissipation in which you are involved, leave you little leisure for intellectual discrimination. When I reflect upon the strong and brilliant talents you received from nature, I sigh over your passion for cards and

crowds; but whatever be your pursuits, may peace, cheerfulness, joy, health, and prosperity be the result! My heart is fully sensible of your kindness to me on a thousand accounts. It was infinitely kind to wish, not only to receive my troublesome self, but Giovanni's dear Elizabeth, at the approaching Abbey music. She is grateful to you for that desire, and for the beautiful nosegay you sent her.

It

Dear friend, I am far from well; my nerves are injured by my late anxieties and sorrows. is in tranquil scenes only that they are likely to recover their tone. Since Mrs Weston spared you to Bath last spring, and to Margate last summer, I should hope she might spare you to Lichfield, if you could persuade yourself to endure the stupidity of a provincial town, lately accustomed to gayer and more interesting scenes.

How severely is the spring repressed by these fierce east winds, after having been nursed into premature bloom, by the hybernal mildness!

"The odorous chaplet

Worn by old Winter on his icy crown,"

Makes us grieve the more to see the vernal garlands thus nipt.

You expect to be charmed by the Abbey music, and charmed you will be; but the chorusses are its great fort; there is an inevitable air of meagre contrast to them in the songs. No single human voice can sufficiently fill a space so immense, or appear, after the chorusses, more than as a gurgling rill near the falls of Niagara. Adieu!

LETTER III.

MISS WILLIAMS.

April 21, 1789.

MUCH and various is the kindness for which I have to thank you, my dear Miss Williams; for your consoling sympathy, for the desire you express for our speedy meeting in town, and your acceptable present; the last effusions that shone in the public eye, from an imagination, of which genius and beauty are the constant associates.

I am pleased with many things in these volumes*, and charmed with others; with the son

* Julia, a novel by this Lady.

nets, notwithstanding the illegitimacy of some of them, and the absence in all of that varied pause, which appears to me the characteristic grace of that order of verse; with the sweet little pensive elegies, which look back to the banks of the Evan, breathing very beautifully, that local tenderness which is so dear to my taste;—and above all, with that very fine ode on the power of poetry. The characters in this novel are drawn with great spirit and truth.

Perhaps I should speak to you of some things I less like in this ingenious work, if I thought you liked that analyzing ingenuousness, with which I have written to you of your former publications. Taking no notice of those observations, I conclude you thought them superfluous and immaterial. Else it is my rule, when I write to authors, whose compositions I think worth investigation, to prove the sincerity of my praise by a confession of those general features, or particular passages of the composition, which appear to me less admirable.

If Cornelia is Mr Hayley's, it is surely far below the level of his talents, though it is, in some respects, as much above that of ordinary pens.

It is true, my dear Miss Williams, the existence of him, whose death yet sits heavy on my heart, had been long destitute of all corporeal

and intellectual energy; but it is a state of severe suffering alone, which, thank God, his was not, that can banish the yearning regrets of affection for the loss of even the most faded and imperfect resemblance of what once was.

I am, however, most thankful, that the heartdear gratifications of protecting, comforting, and caressing that desolated form so long were mine; since the desolation, though almost total, was not to himself drear. Pain seldom visited his weak and calmly torpid frame, and never his mind during several past years; one period, of about two years excepted, in which his failing memory about his property, made him perpetually fancying that he had none, and was become poor; except in that interval, his life had been happy above the common lot. No unpleasing circumstances ever dwelt upon his joyous imagination.

That dread of dissolution, so natural to every human being, on the startling symptoms of its approach, was to him precluded by the gathering mists upon his intellects, which veiled the prospect of the grave.

The pleasure he took in my attendance and caresses, survived till within the three last months, amidst the general wreck of sensibility. His reply to my inquiries after his health, was