cism. Peru, consequently, wants strength, and a sufficient portion of characteristic variety, and its metaphors and epithets are sometimes incongruous; but the numbers are richly harmonious, the landscapes vivid, and the fancy wildly and luxuriantly elegant. Have you forgotten, also, that Miss Baillie, just emerged as the acknowledged author of the Plays on the Passions, is a Scotish woman; and, in my estimation, if indeed they are her's, as nobody now seems to doubt, a very great poet. Whatever may be the faults of her two tragedies, poetic strength and beauty are to be found in them, which place her in the first rank of those who, in this period, have struck the Delphic lyre. No plays, except Jephson's, approach Shakespeare's so nearly. Surely that obscurity, which Burke pronounces a source of the sublime, is totally different in its nature to the strained and abortive conceptions of Miss Bannerman's pen! The obscurity he means, is where sentiment is rather hinted than expressed; and, to an intelligent mind, conveys a different meaning to that which the words simply bear. Certainly an author is not obliged to find his reader brains; but that obscurity which puzzles a reader, who has poetic sensibility and taste, to guess what the author means, is a great inexpiable fault; and if it occurs frequently, is as sure a proof of weakness in the powers of composition, as the former species is of strength. There are other things, as you well know, which may render poetry obscure to the prosers, without fault in the composer;-as inversions, using epithets as verbs-active, or as noun-substantives, together with the bold and graceful omission of the conjunctives. But the palpable obscure in which Miss B.'s ideas are perpetually struggling, is not the result of the poetic licenses, any more than of that mode of expression, which purposely leaves something to be supplied by the imagination of the reader. Unquestionably she has a good ear for the construction of numbers; her lines flow tunefully. Flowing numbers are, however, but the drapery of poetry, valuable when they clothe clear and vigorous thoughts and striking imagery; but worth little when they enrobe such blown and empty conceptions as I find on the pages of -Miss B. You speak of the wildness of her fancy,-it seems to me elaborate, yet incomprehensible, inflated, yet trite; and, if I know what invention is, that prime essential in poetry, she has absolutely none. Therefore is it, that no time, no instruction, no experience, will make her a poet, though her command of numbers tolerably qualifies her for a translator; not of that class, however, which rise upon their originals. I will take an early opportunity of shewing you the ground of these my convictions. Meantime, I remain, &c. LETTER LVIII. REV. R. FEllowes. Lichfield, Sept. 27, 1800. my IN my mind and heart there must be more deficiency than I hope belongs to them, if I could have been willingly silent, through many weeks, to a letter of so much ingenious and philosophic spirit as this before me. Accuse my stars, on this subject, if you please, but acquit my heart, I thank you for the beautiful and just disquisition in your last, on the irrationality and the mischiefs of Calvinism; but am surprised to see you confess, that you can hardly regret its morose and reasonless prevalence in the mind of Cowper. You add, "If the Task owes some of its defects to the prevalence of that illiberal principle, it is perhaps indebted to it for more of its beauties, even to that spirit of dejection, which saddened his heart beyond the usual tone of human sadness, and gave an enthusiastic sublimity to his sensations, beyond the common soarings of mortal enthusiasm. Some passages in his Task, of deepwoven gloom, are almost too much for my feelings. So forcibly do they express the state of his heart at the time he wrote them, as to overpower me with concern, and sympathy, and admiration." Ah, when you said you could scarcely regret that bias in Cowper, you forgot, surely, how dear it had cost him ;—that it induced him, at length, during the course of many years, to believe himself an outcast from the mercies of his God; that it overwhelmed all his powers of intellectual exertion, and left them a dismal wreck. That internal misery was, however, an after consequence. In his narrow and bigotted satire on human praise, in the sixth book of the Task, I perceived the dark seeds of fanaticism sown, and feared they would, in time, produce bitter fruits, deadly to the peace of his heart. But, during the composition of the Task, they had only choked his generosity respecting the no ble enthusiasm of just applause; they had not then shed their envenomed dews on his bosomtranquillity. Surely your late perusal of Cowper's Task was beneath a consciousness of the miserable state into which the mind of its author had since sunk, and you have attributed the sensations of pity and concern, which remained for him in your heart, to those apprehended effusions of wretchedness in the poem, which I cannot perceive that it breathes, even in the slightest degree. content. No composition can breathe more inward selfCowper's egotism, in this his great work, is all happiness. How cheerily, through the first book, does he rejoice in that corporal health, and vigour, which enabled him to taste abroad, and widely explore the scenic beauties, through every change of climate and season! We see him exulting in his tender friendship for Mrs Unwin, with whom he lived. He paints its delights in such affectionate terms, as induced me long to believe him a married man. The softest calm of heart breathes through those lovely descriptions, when he rejoices in "The air salubrious of the lofty hills, The cheering fragrance of the dewy vales, |