has often received advantage; my judgment been strengthened against future commission of similar errors, and endowed with the power of instantly perceiving them in the works of others.

Indeed you are mistaken in supposing that my public controversy with Mr Weston, about the reputation and claims of the sweet swan of Twickenham, produced a diminution of our mutual amity, warmly as each defended the glory of their favourite poet. Neither has any alienation of friendship ensued upon my late contest in the Gentleman's Magazine, with the ingenious and amiable Jerningham. Truth is elicited in such kind of disquisition; prejudices are brought to her test, and the perplexities of thought disentangle by developement.

Hence, as Dr Beattie finely observes, "Fancy learns to fix her aim, to fluttter no longer on fickle pinions, and to try her own effusions, and those of others, by the immutable laws of sense, reason, and consistency."

Taste, it is true, is extremely various ; but where good sense, metaphoric consistency, or the rules of grammar are accused of having suffered violation in certain instances, the cause may not be tried at her arbitrary tribunal. Taste can only be allowed to preside on broad and general ground-thus-a reader, endowed with sensibili

ty to perceive the powers and the charms of fine writing, both in prose and verse, may prefer Pope's poetry, not only to Dryden's, but even to Milton's. Dr Johnson certainly did. Another ingenious man may like Dryden better than Pope, and Addison's prose better than Johnson's ;-but if it were possible that any of those writers could be charged with having violated, in particular passages, good sense, intelligibility, the congruity of metaphor, or the laws of grammar, the defence of those passages could not be referred to the decision of taste. If, on the principles of sound sense, the established laws of our language, and the allowed licences of poetry, which sanctions no opacities that the understanding cannot pierce, they may not be justified, then candour will confess them indefensible. On the contrary, if they can be defended on those grounds, their justification must be easily made; and, if the accuser is ingenuous, he will, when made, confess that his charge had been hastily and inconsiderately brought.

I shall be glad to see the emerging poems of Bloomfield, of which you make such honourable mention. From the title of one of them, Market Night, I conclude he has tried his strength with the muse of Burns, whose Market Night, entitled Tam o' Shanter, is one of the ablest compositions B b

VOL. V.

of the kind I ever met. In it, characteristic nature, humour, and sublimity, are blended, and with skill that is at once judicious, daring, and masterly.

You sent me a curious specimen of priestly fortitude from Deering's sermon, preached before Queen Elizabeth. The race of such unflattering pastors is extinct. The Gloriana of those times is said to have been a very absolute monarch; and it is also said, that the liberty of the subject has been greatly increased since her golden days. Yet, if a preacher were as freely to reprehend and warn our king, in his royal presence, he would be silenced on the instant; turned out of the pulpit, and hurried into bedlam, or the Bastile in the Cold-Bath-Fields. Not Parr himself durst make the experiment.

You threw cold water on my investigations in good time; a cruel personal misfortune had, previous to the receipt of your last, dampt all the energy of my mind, and rendered writing irksome, -even to my most valued friends. Unmolested by me, therefore, in future, shall you admire Miss Bannerman's muse, and despise Darwin's, Addio !

LETTER LXVII.

BARUCH LOUSADA, Esq. Devonshire.

Lichfield, June 23, 1801.

I HAVE great pleasure in the content and happiness which breathe through your letter. The beauty that smiles, and the pure gales, mountainous and maritime, which blow around your delightful retreat, charm you, I perceive, with daily increasing power. The constant succession of impressions so agreeable, will prolong your days of strength, and the period of longevity. Friends and acquaintance are fickle-are`mortal; or, retaining their being and their kindness, are often removed from us so distantly, that no traces of their society remain, except the ghost of it upon a piece of paper; but the lovely scenery of our home-situation, unalienably ours, is an ever-new, ever-increasing delight to minds which have any taste for the scenic beauties of nature. All affections grow and increase by indulgence; the lawns we have smoothed, the trees we have cultured, are our grateful friends, our unoffending children. When spring restores their faded bloom, we seem

to partake their renovation. The rejuvenescence of general nature, when our life is past its meridian, has perhaps a tendency to inspire melancholy sensations; but the revived youth of our own scenes exhilarates our spirits. They are parts of ourselves, which rise up again before us with added charms and graces.

Our friends, Mr and Mrs Simpson, are on their road from town, hastened by a melancholy event, the death of Mrs Stephen Simpson, sister-in-law to the gentleman you know. In the fulness of her youth, beauty, and strength, has she perished, -by the same fatal circumstance in childbirth that robbed the world of the distinguished author of the Rights of Woman.

We of this city, who so recently witnessed the luxury of health in this late-selected victim of the king of terrors, who felt the cheering influence of her open-hearted smiles, and listened to the melody of her syren-songs, scarcely know how to think of her as one that was, and is not. Never for youthful pair did the marriage-torch shine with a more pure and steady light. It is bard when the cypress bud is found lurking in such a well-culled and unfaded wreath. Adieu !