We find the effect of the interesting Pizarro greatly injured, no doubt, by the general absence of blank verse, as a vehicle of its sentiments; and still more by the involuntary slidings into measure, which is the appropriate language of tragedy. Prose and blank verse in the same sentence!-the mixture is monstrous, except where the latter is used as quotation. But I do not partake your avowed dislike to Shakespeare's custom of making the vulgar characters of his drama speak in prose; on the contrary, I think the effect good. In real life, we find a marked difference between the language of servants and their principals;and prose for the first, and blank verse for the second, appears to me a just difference. As servants and other inferior people assume a softer tone, and endeavour at a better language when they are addressing gentlemen, so I believe Shakespeare generally, though not always, makes his more grovelling characters speak in blank verse during their dialogues with their superiors, though they had, perhaps, in a former scene, been conversing with each other in prose; and hence the offensive mixture of the two dialects is avoided.

It comforts me that our affairs on the Continent wear, on the whole, a more promising aspect than during several past years-notwith

standing the ruthless infatuation of sending the flower of our armies to sink blasted in Holland. Have not our ministers had warning enough in our former failures, not to trust that Will o' th' Wisp of loyalty, which allures their credulity to the faithless bogs of that willingly enslaved country? End how it may, I shall ever think the war a most pernicious one;-that our liberties, our property, and our laws, would have been secure beneath the shade of the olive, and in the protection of our fleets. The status quo ante bellum will be deemed a glorious peace, and the waste of blood and treasure to this country will be forgotten :-I mean by the war-loving multitude: not that I believe treacherous France would have respected our neutrality more than she has done that of other countries; but we, in our waterwalled domain, were beyond her reach, and the tyrannies of her democracy would have effectually prevented all the contagion of her example.Adieu !

LETTER XLV.

MRS M. Powys.

Lichfield, Oct. 17, 1799.

THE literary world now asserts that the Plays on the Passions are not Mrs Radcliffe's. I should have been incredulous to the report that they are, had not the errors, as to responsibility of causes to their effects, and the atoning excellence, resulting from the horrible grandeur of those effects in themselves, been of the same complexion with the faults and beauties in her novels. Otherwise the occasionally rich vein of poetry, which we find in the single passages, together with a degree of deep insight into the human mind, are above that level of talent which produced her romances. When I spoke my sentiments to you of the plays, I had not read their introductory dissertation. Now, after perusal, I confess it is far from pleasing me. The ideas in that tract are confused and abortive, and the language has no felicity. Abounding in Scoticisms, that, at least, cannot have been written by an Englishwoman- and Mrs R. is an

English woman. They now tell us this work is from the other side the Tweed. A young poet, of the name of Scott, and a native of Edinburgh, has sent me poems of his in manuscript, Glenfinlas, and the Eve of St John; each of which bear the stamp of a genius fully responsible for the Plays on the Passions. I have not, however, any other reason to believe them his. The real author cannot be long of being deterré. It is rumoured that he does not mean to pursue his plan. I think it a fine one, but of very difficult execution. Gigantic miseries are seldom produced by one uncompounded passion; ungoverned vanity combines with ungoverned love to produce them in Count Basil, and even De Montford's character, which adheres more to the author's first design, is not simply illustrative of the mischiefs of hatred ;-originally hatred, that passion is, in the course of the play, so compounded with envy, as to make that the more operative feeling of the two.

I thank you for taking the kind trouble to point out those of my sonnets which best pleased you. It is agreeable to recur to them, and they meet my eye gilded by the consciousness that they are the favourites of so dear a friend; but I am sorry that you disapprove the publication of such as

breathe those sorrows which flowed from the cruel alienation of my forever loved Honora's affection.

I have shewn you the tinted print from Romney's fine picture of Serena in the Triumphs of Temper, and which bears such perfect, though accidental, resemblance to Honora, when she was in the glory of her virgin graces. It is in the very posture in which she often sat reading before she went to rest—so used she to fold her night-robe around her lovely limbs. The luxury of mournful delight with which I continually gaze upon that form, is one of the most precious comforts of my life.

My writings the Monody on André, his letters published with that poem-the sonnets that refer to Honora, which they had seen in manuscriptmy description of her, had so interested Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Ponsonby, that, when they heard me say I had a perfect image of her in the print of Romney's Serena, they were extremely desirous to obtain one of the impressions; but they were all long since bought up. I was, however, fortunate enough to procure, though not to purchase, one for them. I got it framed and glazed, with an entablature over the figure, thus inscribed: "Such was Honora Sneyd!".

I am gratified that you take pleasure in reflect