So, also, in the passage, book the third, which commences "How various his employments, whom the world And, in the ensuing one, which begins, "The morning finds the self-sequester'd man Indeed, through the whole of that book, he paints his daily employments with serene gladness, and, in the fulness of its impression, asks "What can I wish that I possess not here? Health, leisure, means to improve it, friendship, peace, In the fourth book, domestic pleasures glow through his winter evening. The twilight hour, in which he amuses himself with the alternate brightening and deadening fire, producing odd shadows on the ceiling; and, with the ludicrous figures in the red cinders, bespeak an heart at rest. Beneath impressions, deeply sombre, we may be soothed by vernal, by summer, and autumnal scenery; but tranquillity of spirit is necessary to produce the serene pleasure which Cowper avows, amid the gloom and devastation of winter, when he says, "How calm is my retreat! O how the frost, The contrast in those three lines reminds me of a passage in Dr Johnson's Tour to the Hebrides. As the rage of the elements is here contrasted with the placid comforts, so, in Johnson's record of the laird's mansion in the Isle of Raasay, it is thus compared with festal enjoyment : "Raasay has little that can detain a traveller, except the laird and his family; but their power wants no auxiliaries. Such a seat of hospitality, amidst the winds and waters, fills the imagination with a delightful contrariety of images. Without is the rough ocean, and the rocky land, the beating billows, and the howling storm; within is plenty and elegance, beauty and gaiety, the song and the dance." I trust you will now confess that I have justified, by proofs from the poem, my dissent from your opinion that the Task is indebted for its sublimities to a deep dejection of spirit in its author. After a fortnight's residence with a friend in Warwickshire, I passed two days, on my return home, at Birmingham, beneath the hospitable roof of Mr Edward Simpson. Distinguished were those days by the society of our illustrious friend Dr Parr. Your talents and virtues were more than once our theme. His eloquence did them not only brilliant but affectionate justice. It threw, on many other themes, and, above all, on the national ones, the strongest lights of reason and imagination. On one only theme was he unjust; but that so flagrantly, so inconceivably!-Ah! it was to Gray, the first lyric bard the world has produced. Such a spot of heresy on such a sun as the mind of Dr Parr! Spot, did I say, an absolute eclipse. From his superiority of genius, it is even more astonishing than the present dean* of Christchurch's assertion, viz. that of all, in every age and nation, who have aspired to the name of poet, only four deserve it: Homer, Dante, Ariosto, and Shakespeare. Admiring and revering Dr Parr as I do, my concern on this subject kept pace with my won der. It would have been idle in me to have disputed upon a point so indisputable; as idle as to have tried to convince a blind man of the reality of light, who, because he could not perceive it, * Dr Jackson.-S. denied its existence. From Dr Parr's equal abilities, and more liberal spirit, I hoped dispersion, and had no dread of augmentation of the Johnsonian clouds on the fame of our matchless lyrist. The bitter pill of such a disappointment wanted gilding, and he did gild it; even by a kind promise to visit me, accompanied by you, in the course of the winter. Be willing, I pray you, to realize the plan! LETTER LIX. THOMAS PARK, ESQ. Lichfield, Jan. 5, 1801. WHEN you recollect what claims I have made for Dr Darwin, as the inventor of a new class in poetry; as an exquisite poetic painter, both in imagery and landscape; as investing philosophy, and all her sciences, with the brightest irradiations from the Delphic shrine; as master of the grandest harmonies of the heroic couplet;-remembering these, my claims for him, you will expect to hear me avow the utmost astonishment, that you should pronounce his great work, "a shewy and short-lived garden," and Cowper's Task a noble orchard of winter-keeping fruit. Allowing the last of your decisions, I utter my warm protest against the first. Have I lived to hear a gentleman, whose talents I respect so highly, admire Miss Bannerman's muse, and despise Dr Darwin's? I have no prejudice in favour of him, or against her. All who have known me through life, by conversation, as well as by pen, will testify, that I have been ever ready to acknowledge, and to applaud the talents which adorn my sex; have ever been tenacious of the fame of my accomplished sisters of the lyre, where I thought them well-founded. How must I be changed, if, as you say, I have indeed applied the scalping knife, and the tomahawk, on the fair form of real genius! I disavow all partiality to Darwin. His conduct to me has not been calculated to inspire it. He has taken pleasure, from the time he commenced author himself, to depreciate my writings, which, till then, he had warmly praised. His taking my landscape of the valley he cultivated near Lichfield, written and published in my name, in the Gentleman's Magazine and Annual Register, before one line of his noble poem was written, and years before it came out; taking it, I say, and publishing it as the exordium of his |