than Jacobin principles, while the people were easy and their property safe, could ever have shaken them. Misery is restless, and naturally rushes on change, at every hazard of changing bad to worse. Peace, state-economy, and a more liberal tolerance extended to the Christian sectaries in both islands, would have enabled government securely to have scorned the dread of Jacobin principles, so justly, so odiously characterized by atheism, tyranny, slavery, and murder. But, to shun that imaginary danger, we have embraced the prophecied and increasing perils of the present hour. Every rising day witnesses my prayers for their dispersion! Adieu.

LETTER VI.

DAVID SAMWELL, ESQ.

Lichfield, Dec. 31, 1797.

I THANK you for the amusing particulars of your summer's tour in your native principality. The grateful enthusiasm of the Cambrian Tonsor delights me. Such warm veneration for the unbeheld possessors of distinguished intellect, or virtue,

evinces congenial elevation and nobleness of mind. I love your ingenuous confession, that his tribute of unconscious praise gave you pleasure. Horace, in the Ode to Melpomene, avows the value he sets upon such artless proofs of admiration.

In climes and periods, and such there have been, in which reverence of existing genius is prevalent amongst people of education, not only rustic minds, rich in the native vigour of thought and perception, but even the stupid many catch, from their superiors, a portion of this reverence. They wonder and exclaim, with a foolish face of praise, and, like the Romans in Horace's time, point out to strangers their celebrated countryman, in whose fame, by local affinity, they conceive themselves in a degree honoured.

That period in England is long past away. I am glad that it still prevails in Cambria. The fastidious coldness of the higher classes to living genius, keeps the vulgar in ignorance of its claims to distinction. Where the sun of celebration has not shone, there can be no rainbows.

Is it possible that Wales may justly boast the greatest poetic genius of an age that has been so rich in that rare emanation? What! transcend the Burns of Caledonia? the English miracle, Chatterton and even equal Shakespeare! Unless you are immeasurably partial, why are powers

of such magnitude locked up from general approach, and confined to a language which, from the insurmountable difficulties, when infancy is past, of acquiring it, never can overleap the local bounds, except by means of translation. You who write English verse with facility and elegance, should emancipate the Cambrian muse. I must not hear from you the cant of pedants about untranslatable excellence. That excellence can be only verbal, and consequently not first-rate, the mere felicities of expression, evaporating in transfusion, which the chemic powers of genius cannot convey, with undiminished force, into another language. All the grand poetic constituents are transmutable,-as pathos of sentiment, strength and magnificence of thought, allusion, metaphor, simile, and imagery. If your Edwards possesses these intrinsics, convince us that he does, and teach us to admire him, as the German writers teach their countrymen to admire the boast of England, to whom you venture to compare your Cambrian.

If I have doubts of that country producing the greatest poet of this age, I have none that it has produced the finest harper in Europe. Randall of Wrexham is the Meonides of the pedal harp, not more kindred to that bard in the doom of occular darkness, than in the richness and variety of

harmonic fancy,-the alternate grandeur and delicacy of tones, and the wanton heed and giddy cunning of execution. Mr Saville has persuaded him to come over here for a benefit concert next week. He will be my guest; and Mr S. is straining every nerve to fill the room, for a man whose genius and art illuminate the eternal darkness of his destiny.

You make me long to know the Helen* of your native clime, who has ripened her intellectual blossoms into such rich fruit, beneath its rocks and mountains.

I cannot boast of my health; it has been subject to various depredations since I had the pleasure of adding personal consciousness to the long friendship of our spirits, ere the eye and the ear became partners of the compact.

O the times! the times!-their darkness gathers fast around us. Thus accomplish, one by one, the derided prophecies of the minority. Heaven grant they may not be fulfilled to their last letter!

The bells are ringing out the old year-an ancient but very unfeeling custom. It seems like revelling over the grave of a just departed friend;

* Miss Helen Lloyd, sister to the Rev. Mr Lloyd of Caerwys.-S.

and my heart recoils at the sound. The horizon disdains congeniality to such ingratitude;-its early darkness, its loud sighs, and its tears, pay a different tribute.—Why not reserve it to usher in to-morrow's dawn, with gladness that would not then, as now, have been unfeelingly anticipated? The sounds of clanging triumph may welcome, without reproach, the new-born year; and may it eventually prove worthy of the joy which shall hail its rising!—May it teem with occurrences which shall rescue the nation from its self-incurred perils !

LETTER VII.

MISS PONSONBY.

Lichfield, Jan. 29, 1798.

FOR how brilliant a letter in allusive wit, and in every sort of elegance, am I indebted to dear Miss Ponsonby. It came to sooth the sense of violent rheumatic pain and imprisonment. Earlier had I acknowledged a packet so welcome, but no sooner was I able to employ myself, than the Cambrian Orpheus, Randall of Wrexham, be