chat-spilled tears-popt out the secret-fished out the cause-noodle, &c. Then the perpetual recurrence of the word wink, is beyond measure disgusting. Why did he not, on serious occasions, substitute the word glance, which had occupied the same space in the verse? When we read of Eternal Providence accomplishing its designs in a wink, we turn from the low phrase with more than disgust. Nay, on lesser occasions, when the lovely luxurious Almaransis winks her attendants away, the miserable word breaks, in my imagination, all the magic of her graces. We endure to see old Sherasmin nodding and winking, but who, that is elegant, ever winked and blinked in the presence of him to whom she wished to appear enchanting, or even decently wellbred.

However, after all the childish extravagance of the plan, and all the motley infelicities of the translator's style, all the cramp of the numbers, I confess Oberon a work of very considerable genius; that it amused and interested me extremely; and that five times the sum it cost should not induce me (adopting its own language) to suffer any old boozer to carry it off, in a wink, for ever from my book-shelves; and for my young friends, "I hold it very stuff of the conscience" not even to lend it them.

I am beyond measure gratified by all which the dear letter before me says in honour of my late volume. Whatever may prove its reception from the world, and its consequent circulation, if the hireling critics should, by their censures, sink it into present neglect, I cannot therefore repent having published my Sonnets and Horatian Paraphrases, since they have obtained such warm praise from my lettered friends, and since they would not so well have escaped from press-errors beneath the eye of a posthumous editor. If I do not extremely flatter myself, the sonnets possess an inherent bouyancy, which give them the power of emerging in future. That expectation has been often ridiculed as the forlorn hope of the poet; but Spenser, Milton, Otway, Collins, and Chatterton, are instances that it is not always found vain.

Yourself and Lady Eleanor are no strangers to the new poetic star of the Caledonian sphere; but, nourishing, as I do, the pleasing hope of being enabled to pass a few days beneath your roof, in the autumn of this yet wintry year, I almost hope his last and yet unpublished poems, Glenfinlas and the Eve of St John, may not previously meet your eye; that I may have the delight of reading them to you, and observing the lively interest they will excite, and the glowing

praise with which they will be honoured. It is my great happiness to be exempt from the frequent torment of authors, literary envy, though perhaps there is little virtue in exemption so constitutional; but it renders my poetic pleasures wholly unembittered from that source. From a very different one they are often allayed, since I cannot read or hear the beautiful compositions, bold, original, and sublime, which have poured in upon this torpid age, from such various authors, insolently criticized, and unjustly depreciated, without feelings of very painful indigna

tion.

Our little city, in its late contested election, has had a taste of the diabolic mischiefs of awakened strife. It assailed reputation by anonymous libels, and it produced riots which hazarded complicated murders. Though I took no active interest, and, neither by tongue or pen, said one bitter word against any of the party opposite to that which had my calm good wishes, yet, because a certain vilely abusive song upon one of its agents was tolerably written, it was imputed to me. I would as soon have robbed or killed the person it libelled, as have written or encouraged the publication of those verses. I never saw nor heard of them till they had been several days printed, and when they

were read to me, expressed the sincerest indignation against the composition and its unknown author; yet the improbable suspicion produced a most injurious effort of dark-spirited malice and revenge. There can be no doubt the contriver would have murdered me if he durst for the laws. Instances of such industrious villainy, the bitter fruits of a contention, in which personal spite and fury is at once wickedness and idiotism, should teach us the injustice of national reflections ;should shake to air our proud vaunt that Englishmen would, amid the flames of civil war, be less cruel than Frenchmen, or than the Irish.

I am tempted to insert a little impromptu of mine, which arose from my having observed, that Pope had ill-defined the subtle essence of wit in the following couplet :

"True wit is nature to advantage dress'd,

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd;"

since new ideas, or rather new combinations of ideas, are vital to its existence. His dogma applies better to eloquence. This is my attempt on the subject:

"Wit springs from images in contact brought,
Till then ne'er coupled, or in fact, or thought;

Yet, seen together, people laugh and wonder,
How things so like, so long were kept asunder."

I have the honour to remain, &c.

LETTER XXXIX.

JOSEPH SYKES, Esq. of West-Ella, Yorkshire. Lichfield, May 28, 1799.

I JOY to perceive, in the kind letter before me, those free and steady characters, which bespeak an unfailing frame; those sensibilities which seventyeight years have nothing chilled, and an animated clearness of style demonstrating that the intellectual torch wavers not, neither dims in its earthly socket. It was impossible to hope that you should not have irksomely felt the rigours of our late Siberian winter, and its long long reign. Our spring, which has deserted her season, and withheld her hours of promise, deserves equal reproach with that of 1783, which my fifty-fifth sonnet upbraids for the same crime. It glads me that the centennial group have interested so warmly my oldest friend now existing; the pater