just taste than his greater successor, by abstaining from the fault of his model, the invocation of impossible gifts.

You mention the late Headly's work with more distinction than I think it merits. The author's bigotted preference of the first rude blocks of English poetry to the finished statues which later writers carved from them, is surely contemptible. He quarrels with those later writers, and with the moderns, for just ornaments and fertile extension, yet passes no censure on that stiff infelicity of expression, on the quaintness, the quibbling, and the playing with an idea, as a cat plays with a mouse; on the utter want of harmonious flow in the numbers, which characterize our verse from Chaucer's time till Spenser's; and Spenser's sonnets and madrigals, as well as the detached poems of our immortal Shakespeare, are strongly tinctured with them-neither, a little later still, did Cowley and Davenant escape their infection.

Headly mistook awkwardness for simplicity. He had the stupid arrogance to call, in his volume, the most interesting love-poem in our, or perhaps in any language, the Henry and Emma, Matt's versification-piece, preferring to it the old ballad, which has little merit, except that it suggested the plan to Prior, and furnished him with some embryo ideas, awakened into life and beauty by a

Promethean pen. The exquisite poem is entirely Prior's own; and, besides its intrinsic excellence, how infinitely does it increase the interest of the dialogue!

He who could complain of extension, when all the constituent properties of fine poetry, lofty sentiment, poetic landscape, graceful picture, and the natural and pathetic effusions of an impassioned heart, produce that extension, is just as competent to poetic criticism, as a man would be to write upon statuary and painting, who prefers a carved barber's block to the Apollo Belvidere, or Mother Redcap on a sign-post to the Madona of Raphael.

I have the honour to remain, Sir, &c.

LETTER XXV.

EDMUND WIGLEY, ESQ.

Lichfield, Oct. 12, 1798.

I CONGRATULATE you upon Admiral Nelson's glorious victory. It is great for England; and yet I fear it will not give us peace, the most desirable fruit of bloody victories.

The three captive generals of the Irish invasion are here. They have called upon me, introduced by a French gentleman, resident in Lichfield before the revolutionary volcano, from its Parisian crater, burst over Europe.

General Humbert is rather an handsome man, and polite in his address; much more externally polished than the Generals Saraszin and Foutaine; but none of them know any thing of English, and my ignorance of French clogged our converse with the tediousness of interpretation.

The restraints these gentlemen laid upon the depredations and murderous purposes of the savage Irish, entitle them to the civility they met from Lord Cornwallis and his officers; but they will meet with no general attention here. It would be better if the good people of this city would take other methods of reiterating the proofs of their unquestioned loyalty, than by a violation of that precept of the Gospel, of all others the most important to the interests of morality: "Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you." Let them imagine their husbands, sons, and brothers prisoners in France, and as they would the French should treat them, so treat the prisoners of that country thrown on our mercy. Such liberality could do no harm; and, if universally prevalent, might do

much good, by softening the national rancour between the two states, and inducing a mutual wish to sheath the sword of desolation. I lately heard the brave Mr Ormsby of Dublin say, who has so gallantly exerted himself against the rebels in his native Ireland," I called upon the French generals when I was in Lichfield: the instant a man is a prisoner, I forget that he was a foe." I honoured him for the nobleness of the sentiment.-Such an oblivious power ought the misfortunes of our enemies to possess over every mind.

LETTER XXVI.

THOMAS DOWDESWELL, ESQ.

Lichfield, Oct. 29, 1798.

I HAVE been recently informed of your marriage with Miss Paisley-a young lady whose merits have been so represented in the letters of the late amiable Miss Wingfield, as to make this intelligence extremely welcome.

Such a marriage was the wisest plan you could pursue; the most probable means of softening

the misfortune of your life*, and of consoling that loneliness of heart, inevitable upon the loss of a sincere attentive friend and daily associate,-a loss which the casual and interrupted society of common minds could not recompence.

You have now anchored your happiness upon the firmést, yet tenderest, and most indissoluble of all friendships. She who could be wanting in any of its duties towards you, must be the reverse of Mrs Dowdeswell-must want that softness and kindness of temper, which, uniting pity with love and esteem, will produce that constant attention to which Shakespeare's beautiful definition of Mercy applies, when he says its quality is not forced,

"But droppeth, like the gentle dew from heaven,
Upon the place beneath. It is twice bless'd,
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes,

Is loveliest in the lovely, and becomes

The wife of Dowdeswell better than her beauty."

Though I have not the pleasure to know the lady of your choice, I presume upon the friendship with which you honour me, to present my congratulatory compliments to her, as well as to your

* Colonel Dowdeswell lost his eye-sight before he was thirty years of age.-S.