LETTER LXXIV.

MR NEWTON, the Peak Minstrel.

Scarborough, July 21, 1793.

My worthy friend's request to hear from me, while I remained on this coast, must not be neglected. It was on Bridlington Quay only that I ever before saw the ocean. This beach has more picturesque and varied objects, with its silver sands covered with smart people, and with equipages, its slanting town, and castle-crowned cliff, and the countless sails on its glassy bosom ;-yet, as I observed to you at Buxton, it was the request of friendship, and the attraction of a society ever interesting, which prevailed over my design of enjoying that retirement I can so seldom obtain upon the less-frequented coast of Bridlington, where I could often have wandered, contemplative and alone, upon " the damp and shelly shore."

The party I have joined makes Scarborough pleasing to more than my sight, else I do not violently love these very crowded public places. The cold-hearted increase of that silly pride, which prevents general intercourse, makes them

every year less and less interesting. At best, sơciety without friendship is but a barter of ceremony; and even friendly intercourse, such as I now enjoy, is so perpetually interrupted in residences like these, that the hungry spirit only tastes, it does not feed. The duties and claims, and the nominal amusements of such residences, dismiss, like Sancho Panca's physician, the banquet, and avidity catches at illusion.

On Friday evening I beheld a scene, whose maritime beauty, of the placid kind, was consummate. After the long duration of our warm and glowing sky, it that night prognosticated a change of weather. The gloomy clouds that floated through a part of the horizon, darkened the surface of the vast ocean, while the sun was setting gorgeously in the clearer west, and sinking behind the hill to the right-hand of the sea, over which the rays, glancing obliquely, ambered the rocks, tipt with fire the roofs and chimnies of the ascending town, the turrets of the castle, the masts and sails of the ships, scattered profusely, and at various distances, over the deep. This contrast, formed by its dark surface, and illumined accompaniments, had a novel and striking effect. In that instant of gratified vision, my voice, in exclamation, caught the ear of a gentleman, who, with his back towards our party, was leaning over

the rails of the cliff, in delighted contemplation of the scene. Turning hastily, I saw my ingenious and amiable townsman, Mr J. Salt, who has lately studied physic, and taken his degree at Edinburgh. A rencounter thus unexpected, could not but be pleasing to us both, so far from our mutual home. I regret that he proceeds thither to-mor

row.

Here is a toilsome cliff to be descended to the sands; it is formed to gratify the eye, but to weary the limbs, and exhaust, I think perniciously, lungs which, like mine, have impeded respiration. This is an inconvenience which we escape at Bridlington.

The morning ensuing after the scene I have just described, arose with loud and tempestuous winds. I hoped they would have lashed the ocean out of its serene beauty into sublimity yet more interesting; but it only boiled and bubbled a silvery effervescence on the green expanse. No high conflicting waves. They tell me, however, that if these winds had blown east, instead of south, we should have seen a prodigious sea, which would have sufficiently gratified my taste for the terrific.

To amuse the road hither, Miss Sykes lent me a German tragedy, which had been vastly extolled, the Robbers. Its hero, naturally brave and

generous, by extravagance, misfortunes, and unbridled passions, is led into the most attrocious crimes. Dark and violent situations in dramatic writing, require blank verse, and this jumble of horrors is in prose; while the vulgar and ludicrous language, used by several of the personages, the scolding violence of the heroine, whom her lover declares to be so gentle, and the utter improbability of the events, repressed my sympathy, and inclined me rather to laugh than shudder. The only striking and grand incident is borrowed from the history of the Turks. The Sultan Mahomet, being reproached for an uxorious excess of passion for the beautiful Irene, assembles his ministers and officers, and leading her into the midst of them, unveils her face and bosom, then demands which of them could resist or relinquish, after possession, such transcendent charms. They all acknowledge the impossibility of doing either. Upon this the sultan looks furiously around, and, twisting her luxuriant tresses round his left arm, draws his scymitar, and, at one stroke, severs her head from her body, exclaiming, as he held it aloft, "Who now shall reproach me with the want of self-government?"

I

purpose being at home early in September. There I shall hope to hear from you, and to receive

some account of the resurrection of that fine po

litical poem of yours, committed, by needless scruple, to purposed oblivion and actual fire.

LETTER LXXV.

MR SAVILLE.

Scarborough, July 24, 1793.

I REJOICE that your health continues to receive the hoped advantages on that warm and smiling coast, whose sheltered seas sleep so serenely. You have described its situation with such ingenious precision, that I seem myself to be there.

Mrs Sykes, too feeble from her late illness to encounter the gay hurries of Scarborough, lamented that I had pledged myself to the dear party which preceded me there, contrary to my first preference of the quieter shore of Bridlington, whither herself and Miss Sykes would have accompanied me. My Calwich and Wellsburn friends leave this place on Monday next. That day seven-night I have appointed the Westella party to meet me there. I please myself with anticipating the delight I shall feel in their society.