Lord Lyttelton has shown his friendship for the fair sex by an epistle of " Advice," which, notwithstanding the ridicule bestowed upon it by lady Mary Wortley Montague, may be read with pleasure and advantage. Though a very young adviser at that time, he displays no inconsiderable knowledge of character and manners. I must, however, enter a protest against the following maxim:

One only care your gentle breasts should move,
Th' important business of your life is love.

Unless love be here used in the extended sense of all the charities of life, all that is endearing and attaching in human society, I should say that he degrades the female character by his limitation.

I have been in some doubt whether to desire you to take up again the volumes of SHENSTONE. You will find in him nothing equal to his "School-mistress ;". nothing, indeed, which has not some marks of feebleness and mediocrity: yet he has at

tained a degree of popularity which may be admitted as a proof of merit of a certain kind, and as a reason against total neglect. You will scarcely, I think, overcome the langour of his long elegies, notwithstanding their melodious flow and occasional beauties. A life spent in dissatisfaction with himself and his situation, in sickly. gloom and unrelished leisure, was not likely to inspire vigorous strains; and the ele giac tone assumes deep and fixed despondence in the effusions of his imagination. The last of these pieces, in which he deplores the consequences of a licentious. amour, has been generally admired. It touches upon the true pathetic, though mingled with the fanciful.

The "Pastoral Ballad" in four parts is probably the most popular of all his productions. Many persons, I believe, suppose both the measure and the manner to be of Shenstone's invention; but I have pointed out a better specimen of both in Rowe. Simplicity of language and sentiment was

the writer's aim; it is, however, no easy thing to attain the grace of this quality, without bordering upon its next neighbour, inanity. Shenstone has not been able entirely to hit this point: yet he has seve ral strokes of natural and tender feeling, as well as passages of pleasing rural imagery, which he drew from original sources.

His poem entitled "Rural Elegance," is worth reading on account of its descriptions of the modern art of landscape gardening, of which he was an early and distinguished practitioner. The following lines are a very picturesque sketch of the principal operations of that art:

Whether we fringe the sloping hill,
Or smooth below the verdant mead,
Whether we break the falling rill,
Or through meand'ring mazes lead,
Or in the horrid bramble's room

Bid careless groups of roses bloom,

Or let some shelter'd lake serene

Reflect flow'rs, woods, and spires, and brighten all the

scene.

The "Dying Kid," the "Ballad of

Nancy of the Vale," and some of the songs, which are tender and delicate in their sentiment, have afforded pleasure to readers who are not too fastidious in their ideas of excellence. I believe they will do so to you; nor do I wish to foster in you that sickly nicety of taste, which refuses to be pleased with what is really beautiful, because it is not presented in the most perfect form.

Adieu!

LETTER XIX.

My task now, my dear Mary, draws to a conclusion; for although, since the time of Shenstone, several poets have appeared who have enjoyed their day of reputation, and have been consigned to posterity in the volumes of collections, yet few of them have survived even this short interval in the voice of popular fame. I have one, however, to mention who may be considered as fully established in his seat among the most eminent of the poetical fraternity, and whose works are as much consecrated, by the stamp of public applause as if they had received the approbation of centuries. This is GOLDSMITH, one of the minor poets, with regard to the bulk of his productions, but perhaps the immediate successor of Dryden and Pope, if estimated by their excellence.