came my guest. He staid near three weeks. During that period, no hour of sequestration could be obtained for my pen; I was not sufficiently recovered to anticipate in my uprising the winter's dawn, and from breakfast till dinner I had a constant succession of company to listen to the enchantments of the pedal harp, while musical parties, either at home or abroad, engrossed every evening.

Mr Saville took the whole management of the benefit-concert, which he had planned for Mr Randall, and spared no fatigue, no exertion, for the interest of his friend. Considering the luckless occurrence that week, of three smart weddings in the environs, detaining families who would otherwise have been there, the room was better filled than we expected. With breathless attention, succeeded by loud applause, the audience listened to lyric excellence, unrivalled surely in brilliant execution, and tasteful variation. My description of his powers in the Chester paper last week, you probably saw.

But I reproach myself for having commenced a second page before one sigh has breathed to my revered friends, for the untimely death of my dear correspondent, the amiable, pensive, intelligent, Miss Wingfield. Ah, yes!

"That gentle spirit hath aspired the clouds.”

I do not think she was happy, though she would not acknowledge either sickness or sorrow. Like Shakespeare's Viola, " she smiled at grief," while she avoided the circles of the gay and the dissipated, and sought rather to lose the sense of disappointment amidst her books and correspondence.

Averse as I am to writing epitaph, from the exhausted powers of its narrow limits, I could not recollect that I had paid that tribute to the memory of her cousin, Miss Bagot, whom I had never seen, and be silent over the tomb of my friend. I inclose a copy.

Poor Mrs Morhall too!-the sable flag has spread wide over Shrewsbury. The surprise her announced decease excited, was stronger from the robust health of her complexion and frame. They were lavishly promissory of vital duration. The hospitalities and gaieties of that town will have an heavy miss of her taste, her exertion, and the liberal elegance of her table. She was a lively fashionable woman, with a kinder heart than generally belongs to that class of beings. Her husband idolized her, and his anguish on this event will at present be the keenest; but time has consolations for him, which it has not for that * good unfortunate man, whose "universal blank of

* Colonel Dowdeswell, who lived with Mr Morhall, from the time he was struck with blindness.

all creation's works," her cheerful and unwearied attentions cheered and gilded.

I am glad my poem on the future existence of brutes, yet unpublished, has found so much favour in your and Lady Eleanor's sight, and in that of your friends. Yet surely, as poetry, it is below the general level of my compositions. Animated description of what is, and metaphysic reasoning on what, from fair inference, must be, can have no pretence to vie with the creations of fancy on Delphic ground. If I was asked which of all my metrical compositions had, in my own opinion, the best right to pre-eminence there, I believe I should say my pictures of Erebus, in the extracts I sent you from my yet abortive Telemachus-in short, the whole episode of the descent of Orpheus. Its descriptions and supernatural imagery, while they are strictly classical, have no debts to any one of the ancient or modern poets, except for the mere names, local and personal, and to Ovid for the outline, and no more than the outline of the fable. Neither has my Atalanta and Hippomenes, in the same work, any more extensive obligation to that poet.

Accept my best thanks for the compositions which you took the kind trouble of transcribing with so much accuracy, and of ornamenting with so much taste. Earl Walter is another grand

imitation of Dryden's poetic paraphrase of Boccace's story of Theodore and Honoria. In one respect, Earl Walter exceeds its original. In Dryden's poem, the hunted lady's guilt is not imprinted on the reader's mind before her punishment commences ;-therefore our detestation of her conduct is not strongly enough excited to prompt the stern vindictive smile of conscious justice, over a retributory doom so violent and severe. Of Earl Walter, our detestation is previously excited, and we enjoy the sufferings of a wretch who had been callous to pity, and deaf to the pleadings of mercy.

The versification of the Chace, alias Earl Walter, is often too rough and careless.

Hark forward! forward! halloo! ho!

cannot, as a verse, be endured by a nice poetic

ear.

Spencer's Leonora is extremely superior in the construction of the verse, besides that its terrific features are more grand and original—and so indeed are several of the images in those extracts, from a paraphrase of the eleven-times translated Leonora, by the author of this poem, the Chace; with which extracts Mr Saville was favoured by your friends the Scotch ladies.

Your description of your valley, deluged by the late long-continued wetness, and of the power of your gentle gravelly elevation in its bosom, to digest all the rain the Heavens can afford it, delights

me.

The gentlemen of the Staffordshire fox-hunt gave us a ball last week, which concentered all the rank, fashion, and beauty of the country, in one splendid focus. No assembly of such overflowing numbers and such brilliance, has been witnessed at Lichfield since our vicars hall was

'Every lady in the

The hunt uniform room that was not

opened in my thirteenth year. is orange. in mourning, wore her white muslin profusely decorated with ribbons of that glowing hue; and the female group resembled a large bed of mingled snow-drops and yellow crocuses, the floral harbingers of spring. Sir Robert Williams, the acting president, went through the ceremonies of the evening with the most attentive politeness. Like Ariel, he was everywhere, and ❝ did his spiriting gently."

Mr Chris. Smith's song, with the Proteus power which the lover there assigns to his own spirit, is fancifully pretty, but more resembles the ingenious metaphysic conceits of the Italian, than the sombre wildness and daring strength of the German poetry, from which you say this song was