trees and gardens. It looks like an umbraged village, and is all we see from hence of the city, so that nothing can be more quiet and rural than the landscape. It is less beautiful in summer than in spring, from the weeds that sprout up in the lake, and from the set which partially creeps upon its surface. In my youth, it was always clear---but it is said that, some fifteen years back, two of our gormandizing aldermen took a boat and sowed it with water-lilies, to preserve the fish. The mischief is irreparable, since the cleansing it receives every autumn only procures transparence till the sun of middle sunimer enables the deep-rooted weeds to defy the scythe and the shovel. What shall I say for the slovenliness of the inclosed transcripts?—Thus you behold my incorrigible pen sinning, from time to time, against the fairness of transcription,-sinning and confessing, like a frail papist, and repenting without amendment. What lovely weather!-Our valley is bursting into bloom, and the fruit trees of a large public garden in one part of it, now in full blossom, presents a grove of silver, amidst the lively and tender green of the fields and hedge-rows. Alas! the melancholy of the apprehensive heart is rather increased than abated by this vernal luxury. It seems but as gay garlands on the neck of a victim. -In every frame of mind, I remain, dearest ladies, &c. LETTER XIII. THOMAS PARK, Esq. Lichfield, May 10, 1798. THANK you for this renewed proof of obliging attention, in sending me Thomson's Winter, published in the year 1730. Since I wrote to you, I discovered amongst my father's old books, the Four Seasons, three of them published at different periods, though bound up together. The three first bear the same date with those in your collection, viz. Spring, 1728-Summer, 1727-Autumn, 1730— and Winter, 1730; of which last the book that you have presented to me is a duplicate. Therefore I purpose returning it, that you may present it to some other poetic amateur of your acquaintance, who may not possess, and might find difficulty in procuring, this interesting proof of the progressive powers of the fancy and the judgment in so fine a writer; which appears from comparing it with the Winter of the last edition he revised of the Four Seasons, that republished by Dr Aikin, in 1779, and to which the editor prefixed that admirable dissertation on the poetic powers of those compositions. The Winter, in your collection of the earlier editions, is a fourfold treasure in our comparative investigation, from its four years precedence, being published in 1726. It would gratify me to examine it; and if you indulge me, it shall be punctually returned. The climax of excellence, on the whole, is so considerable, from the Winter published in the year 1730, to the same poem which received the poet's last touches, that if the inferiority in that of 1726 to that of 1730, is, as you say it is, in equal degree, you might well call the first a school-boy's task, compared to the consummate poem. I have been extremely amused in examining my father's book of the early editions, and my own of the latest, presented to me by a friend in my fourteenth year. For this amusement I am entirely indebted to your observations on the subject. The examination has explained to me a circumstance, on which I have often, through life, with wonder meditated:-thus-my dear father was himself an elegant poet, though too devoted to society to give up much time to poetic composi tion; while, like his daughter, he shrunk from the trouble of publishing what he had written, and, with more carelessness, lost the copies. In the beautiful works of other poets, he was an unprejudiced and generous enthusiast. The only instance which ever appeared derogatory to the poignance of his taste, and the soundness of his judgment, in that enchanting science, was on the subject of Thomson's Seasons. He acknowledged the genius of their author, and that they were accurate and vivid pictures of nature; but asserted, that their style was frequently turgid and obscure, and that he often met with epithets which rather encumbered than strengthened their substantive. I now conclude, that he had read the Seasons in their early copies only, and probably his criticism was just; while to me, who had only perused them in their improved state, it seemed injurious, and pained me from a judgment which had been the pole-star of my dawning enthusiasm. Sore, on this subject, young as I was, I had the temerity to dissent, to wonder, and to vindicate; nor would concede at all on any point, except on that of the epithets, since, even in the finished copies, I have met with some that, neither adding force or colour, would have been better away; and I now observe their much more frequent re currence in these earlier editions. In them I also perceive occasional inflation and opacity of style, which had disgusted the purity of my father's classical taste. Thomson perceived them too, and his alterations justify the dear censor. I regret that he did not examine the expanded, the elucidated strains, well assured that he would have admired and honoured the self-correcting powers of the bard. I shall state one or two instances of those epithets, which, even in the refined transcripts, yet want the chisel. Speaking of darkness, the poet says, in Autumn, page 190, "Order confounded lies, distinction lost, The epithet fair is a mere make-weight. The fine expression, universal blot, is taken from Milton, who, speaking of his own blindness, says he is "presented with an universal blank of nature's works." To get rid of the encumbering epithet to power, I would rather have said, "And gay variety One general blot on nature ;-such the power |