palm of genius, took the unjust comparison and hyperbolic compliment very coolly; and, in one of his published letters, says, respecting his visit to Eartham," The sparrow chirped very prettily to me amid his groves." For having stooped to the false humility of self-degradation, Mr Hayley deserved the inevitable jar that sentence must give to his feelings. It was an impertinence which he had drawn upon himself.

O! bard of Needwood, remember Milton's noble self-assertion, in his eighth Sonnet-remember also that Pope calls his own writings,

"The deathless satire, the immortal song,"

Surely it is one thing to be vain, and another to assert our just claims. I always enjoy hearing a man of genius telling the undervaluing blockheads, that he feels the extent of his own powers:

"To see him weigh them with himself, Then value;-oft-times nothing profits more Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right.”

Suffer me to apply to you, on the subject of disavowed genius, the following lines, which were subjoined to a gratifying epigram on my Hora

tian Paraphrases, by our learned and venerable Canon, Mr Inge of this place.

"Sume superbiam

Quæsitam meritis; et mihi Delphica
Lauro cinge volens, Melpomene comam."

I see you make Imagination masculine. To be sure the partial distribution of its gifts to the male sex, might induce us to suppose it of the brotherhood; but I have always seen genius manified, and imagination, or fancy, womanized. I hope you pardon word coining. Indeed, according to Richardson, it should be female, on the very account of that partial distribution. His Lovelace, in the Clarissa, says,-" Women make better monarchs than men," glancing at the superiority of Elizabeth's government to that of the five kings who preceded her from our fifth Henry, and to that of her four Stuart successors; also at the more temperate, wiser, and happier reign of Anne, compared to the sway of her four ancestors. For the superiority he thus accounts: "It is from the power each sex possesses over the mind of the other, that a nation has best chance for happiness under a queen, since then they are governed by men, while under kings they are governed by women."

You see the compliment of superior wisdom rests, at last, with you lords of the creation.

I have the honour to remain, &c.

LETTER XXXVII.

F. N. C. MUNDY, ESQ.

Lichfield, May 6, 1799.

YOUR mind, then, is still sore from the tasteless reception, given by the reviewers of that period, to the youthful effusions of your poetic fancy. You tell me that you still cannot help feeling, as an injury, the solicitations you received from the late illustrious Thomas Warton and his brother, to publish them. And is not the warm applause of such men as Thomas Warton and his brother, an host of defence in poetic appreciation, that crushes to nothing the condemnation of all the reviewers that ever talked malignant nonsense about verse, since first anonymous criticism became a trade? Ought, one of the most beautiful local poems in our language for ever to be detained within the limits of a partial publication, a private

press, because they had condemned what the Wartons had admired ?

Your Elegies to Laura, in that volume of your causeless repentance, are as natural and beautiful as the Love Elegies of Hammond, which are less original, borrowing, as they do, so largely from Tibullus.

When I was at Buxton with my dear Honora Sneyd, in the summer 1769, those elegies were first introduced to me and to her, before whose young eyes, for she was then only eighteen, no poetic grace, or defect, passed unnoticed. The present Dr Falconer of Bath was of our party. He had a strong mind, and was then an enthusiast in the charms of beautiful verse. He repeated, by heart, not detached parts, but the whole of your Elegies to Laura, then recently published. They received no advantage from his recitation, which was not harmonious; yet they charmed us. They must have possessed no common share of poetic beauty to induce a man of taste and learning to commit them to memory entire.

Recollect that the two noblest lyric odes the world has produced, Gray's Bard, and his Eolian Lyre, were abused, on their first appearance, by all the hireling periodical critics of that period, as turgid and obscure; that the elegant Lloyd

and nervous Churchill, were employed in writing burlesque parodies upon them, which were read, enjoyed, and admired by the multitude, just as the witty Loves of the Triangles are at present.

It

Can you take up a review, or magazine, without meeting criticism on poetry which outrages every thing like taste, feeling, or even commonsense? One lies before me at this moment. is the New London Review for last April, the present year. I am tempted to transcribe from it the following curious sentences.

"We have little blank verse in our language which delights the ear of taste, if we except the Handel-harmonies of Milton, and that delicious music in some of Shakespeare's lines, which equally enchant us with the sweetness and beauty of the thought. The golden lines of Rowe are not to be forgotten as models of that kind of verse which approaches the language of conversation, and is adapted to the freedom and expression of dramatic and descriptive poetry. Akenside is perhaps an echo, but an exquisite echo, of the tones of Milton. Armstrong exhibits a versification condensed, terse, and didactic; but such blank verse as Thomson's has nothing of poetry but its images, its descriptions, and its expressions; it is not musical."

Now, you are perfectly aware that the abun