all creation's works," her cheerful and unwearied attentions cheered and gilded.

I am glad my poem on the future existence of brutes, yet unpublished, has found so much favour in your and Lady Eleanor's sight, and in that of your friends. Yet surely, as poetry, it is below the general level of my compositions. Animated description of what is, and metaphysic reasoning on what, from fair inference, must be, can have no pretence to vie with the creations of fancy on Delphic ground. If I was asked which of all my metrical compositions had, in my own opinion, the best right to pre-eminence there, I believe I should say my pictures of Erebus, in the extracts I sent you from my yet abortive Telemachus-in short, the whole episode of the descent of Orpheus. Its descriptions and supernatural imagery, while they are strictly classical, have no debts to any one of the ancient or modern poets, except for the mere names, local and personal, and to Ovid for the outline, and no more than the outline of the fable. Neither has my Atalanta and Hippomenes, in the same work, any more extenşive obligation to that poet.

Accept my best thanks for the compositions which you took the kind trouble of transcribing with so much accuracy, and of ornamenting with so much taste. Earl Walter is another grand

imitation of Dryden's poetic paraphrase of Boccace's story of Theodore and Honoria. In one' respect, Earl Walter exceeds its original. In Dryden's poem, the hunted lady's guilt is not imprinted on the reader's mind before her punishment commences;-therefore our detestation of her conduct is not strongly enough excited to prompt the stern vindictive smile of conscious justice, over a retributory doom so violent and severe. Of Earl Walter, our detestation is previously excited, and we enjoy the sufferings of a wretch who had been callous to pity, and deaf to the pleadings of mercy.

The versification of the Chace, alias Earl Walter, is often too rough and careless,

Hark forward! forward! halloo! ho!

cannot, as a verse, be endured by a nice poetic

ear.

Spencer's Leonora is extremely superior in the construction of the verse, besides that its terrific features are more grand and original-and so indeed are several of the images in those extracts, from a paraphrase of the eleven-times translated Leonora, by the author of this poem, the Chace; with which extracts Mr Saville was favoured by your friends the Scotch ladies.

Your description of your valley, deluged by the late long-continued wetness, and of the power of your gentle gravelly elevation in its bosom, to digest all the rain the Heavens can afford it, delights

me.

The gentlemen of the Staffordshire fox-hunt gave us a ball last week, which concentered all the rank, fashion, and beauty of the country, in one splendid focus. No assembly of such overflowing numbers and such brilliance, has been witnessed at Lichfield since our vicars hall was

opened in my thirteenth year. The hunt uniform is orange. Every lady in the room that was not in mourning, wore her white muslin profusely decorated with ribbons of that glowing hue; and the female group resembled a large bed of mingled snow-drops and yellow crocuses, the floral harbingers of spring. Sir Robert Williams, the acting president, went through the ceremonies of the evening with the most attentive politeness. Like Ariel, he was everywhere, and "did his spiriting gently."

Mr Chris. Smith's song, with the Proteus power which the lover there assigns to his own spirit, is fancifully pretty, but more resembles the ingenious metaphysic conceits of the Italian, than the sombre wildness and daring strength of the German poetry, from which you say this song was

paraphrazed. His Monody on Mr Hanbury has many passages of great poetic beauty.

With affectionate devoirs to Lady Eleanor, and every sense of grateful attachment to you both, I remain, dearest Madam, &c.

LETTER VIII.

MRS JACKSON of Turville-Court.

Lichfield, Feb. 13, 1798.

PERFECTLY am I aware, my dear friend, that the paths you have lately trod were very thorny. The warpt structure of the human mind is generally sure to unveil its deformity when pecuniary interest and just principle point different ways. To a mind generous as yours, it is most irksome when instances of selfish depravity are forced upon the attention. That the conflict is past, that justice has fought successfully on your side, my whole heart rejoices.

I entirely comprehend those seeming opposites in your temperament, so well discriminated on the pages before me. In circumstances not very momentous, you would rather endure the depre

dations of selfishness than disturb your tranquillity by contest, and the irksome investigation of human unworthiness. But, with abilities like yours, there must be potent energies, however they may slumber;-energies which, once roused, are capable of the most active resistance. Though they have triumphed, and you wish to procure for them their constitutional balmy slumber, it may not perhaps be suddenly in your power to lull them. If they have been victorious, they have also been wounded, and the soreness may possibly remain some time; but it will never become, as in many dispositions it might, a misanthropic induration.— No your heart overflows too plentifully with the milk of human kindness for such a consequence.

Now is the period in your existence, when maternal anxieties most crowd and press upon the heart,

"When youth, elate and gay,
Steps into life."

Ah! what a proof of the depraved laxness of general morals, when the universities are become scenes of more temptations to indolence, sensuality, and extravagance, than even the army itself! -yet so it is. I wonder not, however, that you