LETTER LXXV.

CAPT. ROBERT WOLSELEY.

Lichfield, Dec. 14, 1801.

I HAVE the satisfaction to tell you that Mr Saville is, we trust, recovering from his late perilous seizure. At his time of life, relapses are much to be dreaded; but it is on all occasions wisdom to hope the best, and not to antedate in imagination the hour of anguish. He is obliged by your kind inquiries.

Your verses to Aspasia, are an ingenious and gallant hyperbole in musical numbers. You say the ideas are not entirely original. Keep your own counsel on that head to the lady. Perhaps she is not likely to trace you to your sources; nor am I likely to penetrate the mysterious veil you have thrown upon her identity. Prying curiosity, the reputed fault of the class of beings to which I belong, is not individually mine. Yet has it frequently been, and, in one instance, comically enough, my fate to receive the unsolicited confidence of lovers. At different periods, four ladies,

and three of them very slightly known to me, have poured upon my ear avowals of passion for my friend Captain S. Arden. They erroneously believed me entrusted with the state of his affections, and wanted to calculate upon intelligence, obtained from me, the chances of success which their attentions to him possessed,

"Silence that speaks, and eloquence of eyes.”

Two of the four were widows; the first young and gay, shewy and well jointured; the second a little autumnal, soft of voice, and languid of eye; the other two were blooming spinsters.

They all declared to me that the loss of Captain A.'s right arm first created that tender interest, which, beneath only common politeness on his part, had ripened into love, impassioned and exclusive. So, if you young men wish to make conquests, you see how easily it may be done ; a smart stroke with a cleaver, between your right elbow and shoulder, and the spell of irresistibility is complete.

I am glad you are preparing for us a poetical landscape of Wolseley Bridge, and its lovely environs. I should suppose the talents which produced that free and beautiful paraphrase of Crazy

Kate, were responsible even for the difficult task of appropriate description, which shall not feebly melt into insipid generality, its invariable fate in the hands of a poetaster.

I thank you, and I thank your domestic friends, for my assured welcome at Wolseley Hall, if I should ever have the happiness of paying my respects there; but, alas! the deep maim of last March, makes me a reluctant traveller, and a troublesome guest. Adieu!

LETTER LXXVI.

REV. R. Fellowes.

Lichfield, Dec. 19, 1801.

COULD I have arrested the short and fleeting day; could I have evaded the obtrusive claims, which swallowed up its hours; could I have averted the influence of dangerous disease from the frame of one of the dearest of my friends, which, during a week, produced in my mind an utter incapacity of attending to abstract themes, then had I not suffered several weeks to pass away since I received your late excellent publica

tion*, ere I gave it that reiterated perusal, that se dulous attention which it can so richly reward, ere I addressed you on its subject.

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Accept, at length, my fervent thanks, › involuntarily delayed, not only for the work itself, but for the high, perhaps too high, and most highly prized honour done to myself, and my publications, at the close of your benevolent note on Mr Godwin's dangerous philosophy.

Deeply impressed by the contents of this volume, I can truly say, that I do not think our language has any composition in divinity so just to the doctrines of the Old and New Testament; so demonstrative of their consistence, their wisdom, their equity, and their mercy. It is only to those malevolent spirits, and those misguided enthusiasts, that your books will not be welcome, and by whom they will be vilified; who make cruelty, partiality, and injustice, chief attributes of the Deity; who wish to promote the temporal misery of every human being, and who so confidently devote to eternal misery all those whom they cannot inspire with demon-haunting terrors, suddenly changing to presumptuous confidence, with abject homage to their Creator, utterly derogatory to the equity and loftiness of his nature.

* Religion without Cant.

Your volumes appear to me to condense all former wisdom of explanation; to render superfluous every future attempt to explain the mysteries of the Christian faith, to prove its justice, its rationality, and its benevolence.

The style of this volume, like that of its predecessor, is nervous and eloquent, with the exception of one habit of expression. Perhaps, had I known the title of your last work before it became irrevocable, I should have pleaded hard for the banishment of one word in the title page, which has an inelegant reviling sound; and in the table of contents to so serious a book, for the exchange of the word ladies to that of women.

You are probably unconscious how perpetually the phrase, as it were, occurs though these pages. In some few instances it may be happily applied; but seldom does it add force to remark, or prove a graceful apology for metaphor. It often gives a timid air to diction, and is more frequently an unsightly excrescence, than a fruit or flower in oratory.

But these are slight specks in a polemic luminary, to which we may apply what our great epic poet says of the sun :

"Pure source of light,

From whence inferior orbs may lustre draw."