LETTER XLIV.

REV. T. S. WHALLEY.

Lichfield, Oct. 7, 1799.

I AM recently returned from my summer's tour. Its Cambrian interests were very lively, as they were wont to be, during my week's residence on Mr Roberts' sublime mountain, and my four days visit to the ladies, falsely called the Recluses of Langollen Vale.

What a little court is the mansion of these ladies in that wondrous vale! Lords and ladies, gentlemen and ladies, poets, historians, painters, and musicians, introduced by the letters of their established friends, received, entertained, and retiring, to make way for other sets of company. They passed before my eyes like figures in a magic-lantern.

This, with little interruption, is the habit of the whole year, from Langollen being the highroad between Holyhead and London, and its vale the first classic and scenic ground of Wales. The evenings were the only time in which, from these eternal demands upon their attention, I could en

joy that confidential conversation with them that is most delightful, from an higher degree of congeniality in our sentiments and tastes, than I almost ever met. Numbers have considered themselves as affronted from being refused admittance. I have witnessed how distressingly their time is engrossed by the immense and daily accumulating influx of their acquaintance, and by the endless requests to see their curious and beautiful place, and not seldom for admittance into their company. Beneath indiscriminate admission, they never could have a day-light hour for the society of their select friends. They have made an established rule not to admit visits to themselves from any persons, however high their rank, who do not bring letters of introduction from some of their own intimate friends. I have several times seen them reject the offered visits of such who either did not know this their rule, or, knowing, had neglected to observe it: and I always perceived such attempts at self-introduction pique that pride of birth and consequence, of which they have and acknowledge a great deal, eminently gracious as their manners are to those whom they do receive. When the sight of their house and gardens only is requested, they do not refuse, if they are alone, and can either walk abroad or retire up stairs; or, even if they have company,

provided they can walk out with that company, and are not at meals; but it is certain those impediments to general curiosity often occur-nor has any person a right to think their existence, and the disappointment it occasions, an incivility.

I am glad we agree so well on the subject of the Plays on the Passions. My literary friends now assert that they are not Mrs Radcliffe's; and, indeed, though the defects and merits of the plans and characters are each of her complexion, yet I always thought the masterly nature of several of the single speeches above her powers, as comparing them with her novels. There is one line poetically great and original as any thing in our language. Where De Montford, shuddering at the newly conceived idea of an impending marriage between his darling sister and hated rival, exclaims :.

"The morning-star mix'd with infernal fire!"

Montford's soliloquy in the wood, is, as you observe, noble writing. It is in the same spirit with that of Narbonne, roaming through the aisles of the church at midnight, previous to the commission of that murder which proves parricidal. We find it hard to say which passage is the most sublime.

We find the effect of the interesting Pizarro greatly injured, no doubt, by the general absence of blank verse, as a vehicle of its sentiments; and still more by the involuntary slidings into measure, which is the appropriate language of tragedy. Prose and blank verse in the same sentence!-the mixture is monstrous, except where the latter is used as quotation. But I do not partake your avowed dislike to Shakespeare's custom of making the vulgar characters of his drama speak in prose; on the contrary, I think the effect good. In real life, we find a marked difference between the language of servants and their principals ;— and prose for the first, and blank verse for the second, appears to me a just difference. As servants and other inferior people assume a softer tone, and endeavour at a better language when they are addressing gentlemen, so I believe Shakespeare generally, though not always, makes his more grovelling characters speak in blank verse during their dialogues with their superiors, though they had, perhaps, in a former scene, been conversing with each other in prose; and hence the offensive mixture of the two dialects is avoided.

It comforts me that our affairs on the Continent wear, on the whole, a more promising aspect than during several past years-notwith

standing the ruthless infatuation of sending the flower of our armies to sink blasted in Holland. Have not our ministers had warning enough in our former failures, not to trust that Will o' th' Wisp of loyalty, which allures their credulity to the faithless bogs of that willingly enslaved country? End how it may, I shall ever think the war a most pernicious one ;-that our liberties, our property, and our laws, would have been secure beneath the shade of the olive, and in the protection of our fleets. The status quo ante bellum will be deemed a glorious peace, and the waste of blood and treasure to this country will be forgotten:-I mean by the war-loving multitude: not that I believe treacherous France would have respected our neutrality more than she has done that of other countries; but we, in our waterwalled domain, were beyond her reach, and the tyrannies of her democracy would have effectually prevented all the contagion of her example.Adieu !