home, at Birmingham, beneath the hospitable roof of Mr Edward Simpson. Distinguished were those days by the society of our illustrious friend Dr Parr. Your talents and virtues were more than once our theme. His eloquence did them not only brilliant but affectionate justice. It threw, on many other themes, and, above all, on the national ones, the strongest lights of reason and imagination.

On one only theme was he unjust; but that so flagrantly, so inconceivably !-Ah! it was to Gray, the first lyric bard the world has produced. Such a spot of heresy on such a sun as the mind of Dr Parr! Spot, did I say, an absolute eclipse.

From his superiority of genius, it is even more astonishing than the present dean* of Christchurch's assertion, viz. that of all, in every age and nation, who have aspired to the name of poet, only four deserve it: Homer, Dante, Ariosto, and Shakespeare.

Admiring and revering Dr Parr as I do, my concern on this subject kept pace with my wonder. It would have been idle in me to have disputed upon a point so indisputable; as idle as to have tried to convince a blind man of the reality of light, who, because he could not perceive it,

* Dr Jackson.-S.

denied its existence. From Dr Parr's equal abilities, and more liberal spirit, I hoped dispersion, and had no dread of augmentation of the Johnsonian clouds on the fame of our matchless lyrist.

The bitter pill of such a disappointment wanted gilding, and he did gild it; even by a kind promise to visit me, accompanied by you, in the course of the winter. Be willing, I pray you, to realize the plan!

LETTER LIX.

THOMAS PARK, ESQ,

Lichfield, Jan. 5, 1801.

WHEN you recollect what claims I have made for Dr Darwin, as the inventor of a new class in poetry; as an exquisite poetic painter, both in imagery and landscape; as investing philosophy, and all her sciences, with the brightest irradiations from the Delphic shrine; as master of the grandest harmonies of the heroic couplet;-remembering these, my claims for him, you will expect to hear me avow the utmost astonishment, that you should pronounce his great work,

a shewy and short-lived garden," and Cowper's Task a noble orchard of winter-keeping fruit.

Allowing the last of your decisions, I utter my warm protest against the first. Have I lived to hear a gentleman, whose talents I respect so highly, admire Miss Bannerman's muse, and despise Dr Darwin's? I have no prejudice in favour of him, or against her. All who have known me through life, by conversation, as well as by pen, will testify, that I have been ever ready to acknowledge, and to applaud the talents which adorn my sex; have ever been tenacious of the fame of my accomplished sisters of the lyre, where I thought them well-founded. How must I be changed, if, as you say, I have indeed applied the scalping knife, and the tomahawk, on the fair form of real genius!

I disavow all partiality to Darwin. His conduct to me has not been calculated to inspire it. He has taken pleasure, from the time he commenced author himself, to depreciate my writings, which, till then, he had warmly praised. His taking my landscape of the valley he cultivated near Lichfield, written and published in my name, in the Gentleman's Magazine and Annual Register, before one line of his noble poem was written, and years before it came out; taking it, I say, and publishing it as the exordium of his

work, without the least acknowledgment, could have no tendency to produce in me an exaggerating spirit concerning his talents. But treatment, thus unhandsome, shall not induce me to suppress the fervour of my testimony in their favour, when they appear to me unjustly arraigned.

You add the injurious appellation of "frothy trifle" to your prophecy of speedy oblivion for the Botanic Garden, so deeply philosophic!-so extensively scientific!-so beautifully picturesque? You might term the Iliad a frothy trifle upon the same ground that you so censure Darwin's poem, viz. as containing little that is important to the interests of true religion or sound morality.

You accuse the Darwinian poetry of possessing no interest for the passions. Such interest had no natural connection with its subject, any more than it had with the Georgics of Virgil, the Metamorphoses of Ovid, or the Midsummer Night's Dream of Shakespeare; and passages of pathetic power, and of impressive morality, are not fewer in the Botanic Garden than in the other three. They are all distinguished, and all should alike be famous to remotest times, as beautiful creations of poetic fancy. Exquisite imagination has always been allowed the first of the poetic merits. Has Ovid lived, through so many centuries, and "borne his blushing honours thick about

him," and shall our English Ovid, shall Darwin die?

If he is not a decidedly moral bard, his verse has no tendency to corrupt the mind. That is more than can be said for Ovid.

Whatever is highly excellent of its species, will not, cannot be short-lived. Rare as is good taste in that science, yes, more rare than genius, its suffrages will accumulate, however slowly, till they have placed excellence upon a rock of impregna ble fame.

It is seldom, and only accidentally, that I see reviews or magazines. Mr White sent me lately one, of the existence of which I had not previously heard the Historical Magazine for September last; and he sent it for its similarity of opinion to mine about Miss Bannerman's compositions. I transcribed its strictures on them, and also on Bloomfield; and shall copy them here, as I wish you to see them, without giving you the trouble to search them out.

"The Farmer's Boy, by R. Bloomfield, is not without vigorous lines, pleasing images, and natural sentiments. Considered as the production of a self-educated shoemaker's boy, it may excite surprise, and deserve a share of praise; but as poetry, viewed without regard to extrinsic circumstances, its merits are not high. In a real or af