varieties, as well as of the broader opposites of vice and virtue, best produces that first dramatic excellence, fidelity to nature.

Will your Lordship allow me a yet extended trespass upon your patience, while I advert to the passages in the play which stand most prominent on my approbation: the speech of the Countess on the 16th page, beginning, "You much mistake me," Isabella's comment upon it-The soliloquy of Casimir in the gallery.—It is poetic, it is Shakespearean. Also the Count's second audible meditation-" Yet to resign her;"—it breathes the genuine feelings of an heart, in which enamoured passion is the Aaron's rod. Lord Henry's description of the guilt-created phantom, is new and sublime; the abbot's basis of education admirable. Such sentiments render the drama a potent vehicle of virtuous impressions. From their unexpected occurrence, they sink deeper into the mind than do congenial axioms from the pulpit. So true is it, not only that a verse may, but that a verse often will, catch him who flies a sermon. Frederic's jealousy is stimulated with great dramatic art—and of high poetic beauty is Lord Henry's speech, commencing at the bottom of the 76th page; so also Louisa's nocturnal soliloquy, viz.

310

"The evening's cold and dreary; the dull clouds
Cling to the mountain's brow.”

We see, we feel the scene. A judicious, that is, not too lavish introduction of scenic-painting into dramatic composition, has an infinitely fine effect:

Light thickens, and the crow

Makes wing to th' rocking wood!"

In all the editions, rocking is written rooky wood. The unmeaning epithet passes unscrutinized by Warburton and Johnson, though supposed to have descended from that pen, from which scarcely one has descended which does not picture the substantive, or, at least, strengthen it. A transcriber might easily mistake rocking for rookybut criticism ought to suspect his fidelity, rather than the poet of a pleonasm so notorious. A rook being only a larger species of crow, it would not be much worse writing to say, the crow makes wing to th' crowy wood. The doubtless real adjective intended was rocking, which, making the night stormy, increases the horror.

Another fine effect of interest in the speaker's situation, increased by scenic trait, is in the expressed despair of Varanes, in Lee's Theodosius,

during the midnight nuptials of his rival. In that instance we forgive, we even forget, the rhymes, from that sympathetic gloom of spirit which imagery, thus solemn, inspires. I have often thought that English poetry has scarce any thing more impressive, more simply grand, more chillingly awful, than the second couplet of the passage to which I allude—thus:

"Lean wolves forget to howl at night's pale noon,
And yelping curs bark at the silent moon."

The prologue to the Stepmother is extremely well written. It has taken Johnson's counsel, to catch the aura popularis, from whatever point it may blow. Nor less happy is the epilogue, in its censure of that immoral tendency which prevails in the German plays. What idiot mania, to forsake our Shakespeare for them!

I have the honour to remain, with high esteem, my Lord, your Lordship's, &c.

LETTER LVI.

CHARLES SIMPSON, ESO.

Lichfield, Aug. 30, 1800.

I CONGRATULATE you, my long valued friend, on your marriage, and also your amiable bride. There are some things which we receive upon implicit trust, and the merit of her who could be your choice is one of my implicits.

Your little wedding present was very kind, and I thank you for the distinction. May the happiness of this union prove unclouded as was the day on which you plighted your vows, till age and inevitable infirmities must a little dull and deaden its glow.

I have lately read a curious book, recently published, Dunster on the subject of Joshua Sylvester's translation of the French poet, Du Bartas. It recals this translation from the oblivion into which the alternate turgidness, and quaint affectation of its phraseology, and Dryden's contemptuous satire, had combined to place it. Its subject, the creation-the first pair-their temptation and fall, with other of the Scripture traditions. The

translation is avowedly bold and paraphrastic, and first appeared when Milton was only eight years old.

The above mentioned book treats of this work, giving large extracts to support its author's conviction, that Milton made plenteous use of its crude materials, and it sufficiently impresses that conviction upon the mind of all its unprejudiced readers.

Strange and rugged are these materials-careless even of quantity in the measures—with rhymes continually doubled in one line, in this way,"And pleasures in his treasures gaily found,”till the couplets rattle and jingle like untuned bells; metaphors frequently hard and obscure; imagery as frequently distorted and violent-interspersed with allusions absolutely farcical.

Yet is this chaos almost as often illuminated by strong flashes of genius. Impersonization, at times, as grand as it is bold, and now and then an highly musical couplet, as if a throstle were to sing, at intervals of silence from the general chatter of jays, cuckoos, and sparrows. This is one of them, though, quoted from memory, it may not be quite in the first line exact-but of the second line I am certain. Speaking of the spontaneous production of the Edenic Garden: