without any impression of having found on its pages much of the strength of original genius. Adieu! Your ever obliged, &c.

LETTER XLVII.

CH. SMYTH, Esq. of Lincoln's Inn.

Lichfield, Nov. 29, 1799.

THE packet before me, for which I thank you, is rich in testimonies of kindness and of genius. The sonnet with which you honour my late publication of Sonnets and Horatian Paraphrases, praises them in a strain which might gratify an ear made delicate by riot of encomium. The

*Sonnet to Miss SEWARD. By CHRISTOPHER SMYTH, Esq.

NOT in thy bowers, Valclusa, when the strain,

Breath'd by the Spirit of love to night's still ear,
Fondly bewail'd fair Laura's timeless bier,
And mourn'd, on Sorga's banks, her loss in vain,

Did purer melody the soul enchain,

Than when, of late, the Muse, to Britain dear,
Tun'd her chaste lyre, that heaven might stoop to hear,
And with its magic charm'd her native plain.

little gems, with which you enrich my Delphic cabinet, shall not, through my means at least, steal into the day-light they would adorn, through the channel of your aversion. I do not partake that aversion: names of high poetic celebrity have graced the monthly repositories, and I often think little compositions of genuine beauty, appear with added brilliance from the foils with which, so situated, they are sure to be surrounded.

Were you, by frequent association, to exchange acquaintance with Mrs Childers of Cantly Lodge, for intimacy, you would find your trust in her talents, and presentiment of her virtues, confirmed. She has that vivid sensibility of the powers of genius, and that cultured judgment, which stamp the highest value on her praise, and teach us to rely on its being the harbinger of lasting fame. An exquisite little poem on the beauty, utility, and comfort of the Sabbath-institution, was, at my earnest

Then why, thou sweet enthusiast, hid farewell
To the rich music of its various chime*?

O
sweep, with volant touch, thy chorded shell,
Yet, yet again, and swell the lofty rhyme,

To virtue's praise; nor with less rapture dwell
On nature's awful scenes and works sublime!

Vide last of Miss Seward's Centenary of Sonnets.

request, sent to the Gentleman's Magazine for last March; though I could not prevail upon her to permit her name to be annexed. It is an answer to Southey's Sunday Morn.

Alas! how has her gentle heart been torn by suspence and anxiety for the fate of her son-inlaw and affectionate friend, Colonel Childers, and for that of her own and only son, cornet in the same regiment! It was in that ill-planned, and worse executed invasion of Holland, which had never been made, at least on the verge of winter, if our cabinet had set the slightest degree of value on the lives and property of Englishmen. I thank God the name of Childers is not on the long and dreadful list of the sacrifices.

This horrid war exhibits, in broad and bloody characters, a lesson against different nations combining in such military league as involves their acting in concert. Austria and Prussia combined against France, they quarreled and failed. Austria and England combined against France,they quarrelled and failed. Austria and Russia combine against France, they quarrel, and their conquests melt from their grasp. England and Russia invaded Holland, now a province to France, and each lays upon the other the miserable result.

Buonaparte proves a second Oliver. This resemblance of epoch, character, and conduct, to

the period of our commonwealth, would strongly prognosticate the return of monarchy in France, if the short-sighted jealousy of neighbouring governments would, by forbearance, leave France at leisure to perceive how incompetent such struggling, vexing sway, to remedy the evils of crowned despotism. While France is fighting for what she believes will be liberty, she can never feel to purpose that, as it has been, so it must ever be an empty name, amid the throes of elective rule.

Your glowing encomium on my embryo epic* would be powerful to stimulate its progress, if this oppressive malady in my head did not combine with the claims upon my attention, verbal and epistolary, to arrest its course. Nor less am I flattered by what you say on the subject of my little poem on the future existence of brutes. Whenever my miscellany appears, it will be found in that collection. It will probably induce the bigots to load its author with invective. I should not wonder if this my avowal of the claims upon Divine Justice of suffering innocence, in every class of being, to hereafter compensation, should induce them to declare me infidel. Nothing is too absurd, too self-evidently false for that spirit of gloomy enthusiasm, and pharisaic calumny, which stalks

*Telemachus.-S.

abroad amongst us, under high authority, layic and sacerdotal. It is not less injurious to cheerful piety and rational Christianity, than are the atheistical and deistical tenets of what is called modern philosophy. Its pernicious teachers are the spawn of Epicurus, Voltaire, Hume, and Gibbon. You are not of either school. You believe and obey Him, whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light. O may I, and all I love, endeavour to obey his precepts, nor find our trust in the mercy of our Creator vain!

LETTER XLVIII.

THOS. PARK, Esq.

Lichfield, Jan. 30, 1800.

A PASSAGE in your last letter gave me an electric degree of surprise. In my first startled wonder, and without waiting to finish your letter, I rushed to my volume of Chatterton's poems, to find those lines in the elegy on Philips, which the personification of winter in one of my sonnets so much resembles. My volume of Chatterton's poems came out in 1778. I always believed it