of such magnitude locked up from general approach, and confined to a language which, from the insurmountable difficulties, when infancy is past, of acquiring it, never can overleap the local bounds, except by means of translation. You who write English verse with facility and elegance, should emancipate the Cambrian muse. I must not hear from you the cant of pedants about untranslatable excellence. That excellence can be only verbal, and consequently not first-rate, the mere felicities of expression, evaporating in transfusion, which the chemic powers of genius cannot convey, with undiminished force, into another language. All the grand poetic constituents are transmutable,-as pathos of sentiment, strength and magnificence of thought, allusion, metaphor, simile, and imagery. If your Edwards possesses these intrinsics, convince us that he does, and teach us to admire him, as the German writers teach their countrymen to admire the boast of England, to whom you venture to compare your Cambrian.

If I have doubts of that country producing the greatest poet of this age, I have none that it has produced the finest harper in Europe. Randall® of Wrexham is the Meonides of the pedal harp, not more kindred to that bard in the doom of occular darkness, than in the richness and variety of

harmonic fancy,-the alternate grandeur and delicacy of tones, and the wanton heed and giddy cunning of execution. Mr Saville has persuaded him to come over here for a benefit concert next week. He will be my guest; and Mr S. is straining every nerve to fill the room, for a man whose genius and art illuminate the eternal darkness of his destiny.

You make me long to know the Helen* of your native clime, who has ripened her intellectual blossoms into such rich fruit, beneath its rocks and mountains.

I cannot boast of my health; it has been subject to various depredations since I had the pleasure of adding personal consciousness to the long friendship of our spirits, ere the eye and the ear became partners of the compact.

O the times! the times!-their darkness gathers fast around us. Thus accomplish, one by one, the derided prophecies of the minority. Heaven grant they may not be fulfilled to their last. letter!

The bells are ringing out the old year—an ancient but very unfeeling custom. It seems like revelling over the grave of a just departed friend;

* Miss Helen Lloyd, sister to the Rev. Mr Lloyd of Caerwys.-S.

and my heart recoils at the sound. The horizon disdains congeniality to such ingratitude;-its early darkness, its loud sighs, and its tears, pay a different tribute.-Why not reserve it to usher in to-morrow's dawn, with gladness that would not then, as now, have been unfeelingly anticipated? The sounds of clanging triumph may welcome, without reproach, the new-born year; and may eventually prove worthy of the joy which shall hail its rising!-May it teem with occurrences which shall rescue the nation from its self-incurred perils !

it

LETTER VII.

MISS PONSONBY.

Lichfield, Jan. 29, 1798.

FOR how brilliant a letter in allusive wit, and in every sort of elegance, am I indebted to dear Miss Ponsonby. It came to sooth the sense of violent rheumatic pain and imprisonment. Earlier had I acknowledged a packet so welcome, but no sooner was I able to employ myself, than the Cambrian Orpheus, Randall of Wrexham, be

came my guest. He staid near three weeks. During that period, no hour of sequestration could be obtained for my pen; I was not sufficiently recovered to anticipate in my uprising the winter's dawn, and from breakfast till dinner I had a constant succession of company to listen to the enchantments of the pedal harp, while musical parties, either at home or abroad, engrossed every evening.

Mr Saville took the whole management of the benefit-concert, which he had planned for Mr Randall, and spared no fatigue, no exertion, for the interest of his friend. Considering the luckless occurrence that week, of three smart weddings in the environs, detaining families who would otherwise have been there, the room was better filled than we expected. With breathless attention, succeeded by loud applause, the audience listened to lyric excellence, unrivalled surely in brilliant execution, and tasteful variation. My description of his powers in the Chester paper last week, you probably saw.

But I reproach myself for having commenced a second page before one sigh has breathed to my revered friends, for the untimely death of my dear correspondent, the amiable, pensive, intelligent, Miss Wingfield. Ah, yes!

"That gentle spirit hath aspired the clouds.”

I do not think she was happy, though she would not acknowledge either sickness or sorrow. Like Shakespeare's Viola, " she smiled at grief," while she avoided the circles of the gay and the dissipated, and sought rather to lose the sense of disappointment amidst her books and correspondence.

Averse as I am to writing epitaph, from the exhausted powers of its narrow limits, I could not recollect that I had paid that tribute to the memory of her cousin, Miss Bagot, whom I had never seen, and be silent over the tomb of my friend. I inclose a copy.

Poor Mrs Morhall too!-the sable flag has spread wide over Shrewsbury. The surprise her announced decease excited, was stronger from the robust health of her complexion and frame. They were lavishly promissory of vital duration. The hospitalities and gaieties of that town will have an heavy miss of her taste, her exertion, and the liberal elegance of her table. She was a lively fashionable woman, with a kinder heart than generally belongs to that class of beings. Her husband idolized her, and his anguish on this event will at present be the keenest; but time has consolations for him, which it has not for that* good unfortunate man, whose "universal blank of

* Colonel Dowdeswell, who lived with Mr Morhall, from the time he was struck with blindness.