to me. have been here, since you are sufferers from the rheumatism. That fiend of the joints is nowhere so successfully laid, as it is called, as amidst these waters. Precious had such an association proved It has not, on this excursion, been given me to converse with many very congenial spirits. Your muse and mine appear together in the library window of this golden semilunar palace, amidst the mountains; but verse seems a deadletter to every person here; the taste for it appears to recede more and more from the palate of the age. Dr Johnson wrote the lives of our bards to lead the reading world from the bright and pure eminences on which they sit into the marshy levels of prose compositions, by the ignis fatuus power of his satiric wit; and Mr Gisborne tells us no poetry ought to be written or read which has not an immediately religious. tendency. So absurd is this age, that it is no longer sufficient that the sallies of poetic fancy should be innocent, wholly free from the pernicious alloy of immoral or immodest tendency-but it would be just as wise to prohibit every subject in conversation that is not morally didactic or devotional. Yet a few more days, and my pilgrimage in this land of strangers will end. Hitherto I may not boast very perceptible benefit in my principal . malady. I have these last nine days been extremely indisposed in my stomach. People tell me it is the effect of the water and bath, contending with bile, and expelling it. I am, however, by no means sure that I have a bilious constitution. My complexion has no tint which bespeaks that tendency. Should it be so, my dizziness may have had that source, and my present malady prove eventually favourable. Sorry am I to find that our triple winter, as you justly call it, has been so unpropitious to the health of yourself and Mrs Park; that pain and dejection have hovered over the couch, near that hearth, of which genius and literature, love and friendship, are the Lares. Our spring, which has been so genial, chased, I trust, the sombre influences, and left the bright ones to their wonted and cloudless operations. I agree with you that it is not amongst our modern songs that the musical composer is to look for his happiest verbalism; but surely the rich sources of English poetry exempt him from the necessity of taking words, which are already adapted to airs in possession of the public ear. For serious glees, and even solo airs, Ossian has long been a mine; and amongst the odes of Cowley, Collins, Gray, Mason, and Akenside, little detached passages may be found, proper for every style of composition, all new and unworn on the actual lyre. The third stanza of Akenside's Ode on the Winter Solstice, would make a beautiful glee, beneath the hand of musical genius. The gaiety of the first part of the stanza, and the pensive solicitous sentiment of the latter, suggest and demand the fascinating power of harmonic contrast. For a gay glee, or solo air, perhaps the following lines, an extempore of this moment, might not be improper. Now Spring wakes the May-morn, the sweetest of hours, Since I came here I have heard of the death of Mr Hayley's darling protegé: Alas!-and also of the decease of a valued poetic friend of mine, Rev. W. B. Stevens of Repton. About his 25th year he published a fine poem, in blank verse, entitled Retirement. It was a poetic morning of bright promise; but the pitchy cloud of the reviewers' perceptions darkened its pure and crystal rays-nor could the mob of readers perceive its lustre through that dense medium of unjust cenConsequently, being a maiden work, it sure. had no sale, and the high-minded reserve of the author was irreparably disgusted. He published no more; and now, alas, the golden fountain of his genius is for ever dried up, ere half the age of man was attained. Such are the mischiefs of incompetent and self-elected censorship. LETTER LI. REV. T. S. WHALLEY. Buxton, June 14. 1800. AFTER passing a month at this place, I purpose returning home next week, without having much cause to flatter myself that the malady which brought me hither is subdued. Sorry I am to find you a fellow-sufferer with me in that wretched dizziness, so much more annoying than pain, even when not by pain accompanied. The Bath waters cured my friend Simpson of that disease-why do not you, who are, comparatively speaking, on their confines, resort to them? The Buxton springs are of resembling, though gentler effects, with the superior advantage of a pure mountainous air, sharp, but bracing, free from the noxious city-effluvia, and from the no less noxious influence of a too luxuriant vegetation. I am comforted that the sombre style, in which your letter commences, brightens on its progress. Your heart cheers and expands beneath the local influence of your scene, rising to your pen; that scene, so lovely, and so beloved! You delineate its rude, native graces; then paint it cultured and adorned as it is by your sylvan industry and taste; and this in colours so vivid, that they pass before my memory in all their charms. Ah! will they ever again meet my actual vision? Ill health, war, which, upon the system it is now carried on, must be interminable at any period, short of that which shall bring utter distress and ruin upon this country; heavier and heavier ministerial depredations every year on our property !—Circumstances like these darken the perspective of hope, when it is bent on the far distant habitations of our friends. I am charmed with the new ebullition, in your last, of connubial love and gratitude. Long may the priceless blessing remain to you, the value of which you so justly, and so amiably appreciate. The venerable Mrs Whalley, senior, your excellent mother, alive at 96, and in full possession of her faculties! May the attenuated thread of her |