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Let modesty and humility bridle his imagination; sincerity, truth, and paternal kindness, be the sources of his admonition, and then may he take your advice, and neglect no means of awakening the passions of his audience, with the marked calamities or signal blessings, which time past or present, circumstances local or general, may present to his subject.

Some fifteen years ago I wrote six sermons. Most of them have been preached. Without the congregation knowing that they were not his by whom they were delivered, I had the satisfaction of witnessing their attention and their tears.

You have mistaken me in supposing I meant to restrain either the pathos or the energy of pulpit eloquence, though I cannot think Bossuet a safe model, in all respects, for our young divines; or that his style would be acceptable from an English clergyman.

Entirely do I subscribe to your censure of Dryden's Annus Mirabilis. No writer of genius disgusts me half so often, both by sins of omission and commission in his poetry, and by eternal self-contradictions and false precepts in his cri

ticisms.

It is the whim of this day to extol Dryden as the mighty Colossus of English rhyme, under whose huge legs his petty successors creep.

"If

you must read English poetry," says the academic pedant, "study Dryden." Now, certainly a model, so often misshapen in its construction, so "smircht and smeared" with colloquial vulgarness; so often cold and affected, as in the Annus Mirabilis, and in many other poems, where the occasion demanded simple energy, is not, with all its great points, a proper study for youthful and rising genius. It is only when matured by familiarity with purer forms of poetic greatness, its attention ought to anchor on the unequal pages of the often sublime, but much oftener groveling Dryden.

that

The high and public compliment you have paid to my pleas against your arraignment of our national preachers, does me honour, and I thank you for it. At present I am much out of health, but if I grow better, perhaps I may feel disposed to send my apology for them to some of our periodical tracts, if you permit me.

You have not, surely, taken it into your account, that it requires first-rate talents to execute your plan for the construction of sermons, well; and that, if ill-executed, the consequences, as to their effect on the human heart, would be much worse than that of those cold homilies, which are called good practical sermons; which, in general, do neither good nor harm. They, at least, escape

that ludicrous contempt, which every attempt to move the passions must create, made by those who do not know how to touch their springs.

Bossuet was a man of genius, so was Sherlock, so was Seed, so was Ogden, and so was Blair, for the newspapers inform me," that his pure and glowing spirit hath aspired the clouds." Our existing clergy, of superior talents, preach very finely, and need not exchange their style for Bossuet's. I wish you could hear some of our pulpit-orators in this cathedral, for they are clear to convince, pathetic to persuade, and eloquent to charm.

The amor patria is fervid in my bosom. The superiority of English talents, in all the walks of genius, I proudly feel. The sons of the song, the pencil, and the lyre, support it more and more every day, and hour, and I burn to assert their claims whenever I see them questioned.

You have made excellent use of Mr Erskine's noble oration in defence of the Christian faith, against the impudent attacks of Paine; and on the virtues and intellectual powers of its great defenders, Newton, Boyle, Locke, Hale, and Milton. When I was at Buxton, in May last, I met with the Life of the late Dr Horne, Bishop of Norwich; and was beyond measure surprised to learn, from that tract, that the Bishop accused

Sir Isaac Newton of lurking infidelity; of having been secretly in league with the infidel writers of his day, to disgrace Christianity, and disprove its truth. The Bishop despises his planetary system, because it does not accord with the assertions of sacred history, or with the miracle recorded by Joshua, concerning the arrest of the sun and moon.

Have the goodness to present my grateful compliments to Lord Carlisle, and congratulations on Lord Morpeth's approaching nuptials with the lovely maid of the house of Cavendish, to which I am hereditarily attached, from reported virtues, and from political veneration. I remain, &c.

LETTER LXI.

REV. ED. ROBERTS of Dinbren, Wales.

Lichfield, Feb. 16, 1801.

It is at once in my power to thank you for your last letter, and for the too costly present of the Dinbren landscapes, from the pencil of our British Claude. Beautiful they surely are, though I could have wished them of more identifying re

semblance; at least that which is meant to represent my darling scene, commanded by the seat on the terrace, which zones your hill.

Had I not previously known what I had to expect, I should not have recognized the view. Those rich vallies are annihilated, that, from the spot in which the Deva emerges on the sight, intervene between it and the terminating mountains. Alike in vain do we look for that fine object, the Valle Crucis ruins, which, in the real landscape, are seen glimmering through the woods. Then the banks of the river have too little foliage; and, instead of frothing, as it does, through its rocky channel, it has, in this picture, a grey, smooth faintness, like plashes of rain-water on a common. And the noble mountains, intersecting and rising one above another, are here softened and hazed away into indistinctness.

I have, it is true, a lover's tenaciousness about that scene, who desires nothing so much as perfect resemblance to the form he adores.

Assured that the friendly and accomplished artist had taken the utmost pains to make these views complete, I tried to conceal from him my want of consciousness, as I gazed upon that picture, that I was ideally standing on the Dinbren terrace, with the sweep of vales at my feet, their

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