"Gave him one look of love, 'twas her fondest and last,"

Is a sweet line. In the next stanza, the Little Grey Man becomes a fiend, after Fuzeli's own heart, who has a passion for blending the ludicrous with the horrible; but the effect is seldom good, either on his canvas, or on the poet's page. And for what purpose, except to burlesque fiendism, is this absurd demon empowered to murder the amiable, unoffending lovers? The next verse is again sublime-the bell tolling over the heath, is still a fine, though somewhat hacknied, accompaniment to ghostism; but

"Wild to the blast flew the sculls and the bones,"

Is grand as any of Dante's terrifics. The ensuing stanza, though soberized, is very good; and there the ballad ought to have closed, for the remainder is common writing, and reminds us, to its own disadvantage, of the simpler and sublimer termination of Tickel's Colin and Lucy:- -awful is that moral lesson, so totally wanting in this odd tale.

LETTER XXIX.

MRS CHILDers.

Lichfield, Dec. 28, 1798.

I GRIEVE to find from your last, that no abatement of your internal malady has taken place since we parted at Buxton, nor can conceive what operation in surgery could serve you; but if it might, if, by suffering even great increase of pain for a time, your health could be restored, your precious life prolonged, surely for the sake of your husband, daughters, sister, and friends, you would submit to endure it with a resolution worthy the affections of your heart, the strength of your mind, and the fervour of your piety. I pray to God that it may not be necessary,-that milder applications may so arrest the progress of the complaint, and assuage its pains, that they may neither shorten nor embitter existence.

Your Harriet is a noble girl,-one of that thinly-peopled class, who live for others rather than for themselves, and in whom the social passions prevail over the selfish ones. To an heart so tempered, expanded, exalted, such a mother

must be dear in a degree certain to produce sorrow and affectionate resentment, that it could be thought possible she should consent to pass this winter in town; that dissipation-the charm of polished circles, and even the renewal of former friendships, could be tasted, while you languished beneath the pressure of long-existing disease. A sensibility so inseparable from her character, rather confirms my esteem than excites it.

Your counter Sunday Morn*, so rich in piety and poetic beauty, was not first shewn to Mr Gisborne by Mrs Jones. I gave it to his neighbour, Mr Baily, desiring he would shew the poem to Mr Gisborne, assured that he would admire it, and esteem the author for its sake. Mr Baily returned it the next day, saying that he had executed my commission, and that the lines had extremely pleased Mr Gisborne.

With his Forest Walks I have been familiar from their first publication. Against those who allow their author strong abilities, knowledge, and unwearied application, but deny him genius, I have uniformly asserted his claim to that primeval irradiation, on the testimony of that work. He has looked at nature with his own eyes, and to do that happily belongs only to people of ge

In opposition to Southey's poem of that title.-S.

nius. We find vital touches in the landscapes and imagery of the Forest Walks, never found in those of the book-made versifier. It is true, Mr Gisborne's verse is not of the happiest construction. Its pauses are not sufficiently varied to produce that rich flow of harmony that winds along the numbers of the Paradise Lost, and of Thomson's Seasons; neither has it the dignity of Akenside, or of Mason's; nor the fascinating union of strength and simplicity which we find in the Shakespearean measures of Crow's Lewesdon Hill; in Cowper's Task, and in the blank verse of Coleridge and Southey: But this objection solely respects the metrical construction of the Forest Walks, for they contain a number of passages

"that glisten in the Muse's ray, "With orient hues, unborrowed of the sun

I do not question Mr Gisborne's powers in conversation, to please, to interest, to instruct; nor wonder that you speak of them so highly. Me he sought not. I dare believe he cannot pardon the sin of avowed authorism in woman, especially where her subjects are not solely religious. I should have regretted his neglect more, but for that sour and narrow spirit of Calvinism which

* Gray.

tinctures his writings. Towards the end of the Fourth Walk, Autumn, he says religion is the only theme which gives poetry a title to genuine praise. Thus, with Gothic barbarism, would he condemn to oblivious neglect the works of Spencer, of Shakespeare, the lesser poems of Milton, and all the lovely poetic constellations that have moved, and yet move, in rapidly increasing number, round those suns.

Dr Johnson, unquestionably religious, though not amiable, and clear of judgment, where neither party-prejudice or literary jealousy arose to darken it, gives a very different opinion on that subject. I think it will be found in his Life of Watts. The passage commences- "Let no pious Christian be offended, if I presume to say that religion is not the most desirable subject for poetry." He proceeds to give his reasons. I have not the book to refer to, nor can I recollect the sentences with verbal precision, but they are to the following effect:-It is necessary to the perfection of poetry, that the imagination should be heated and raised; a state of mind which, however suited to the dark oracles of partial inspiration in the Jewish religion, is not consonant to the sober simplicity of Christian devotion. Poetry is the essence of fancy and fiction; and, provided it does not violate the purity and piety