however, or find a strong and bright resemblance of her in my own country, I feel that am not summoned to propitiate duty with the sacrifice of prudence, and that, conscious of speaking honestly, I can enjoy the satisfaction of speaking safely. Without acknowledging any thing in common, but a name, with that malignant and selfish faction which, surrendering principle to passion, inflicted, in the earlier periods of the last century, some fatal wounds on the constitution, or with those men, who in later times, have struggled, in the abandonment of their party and its spirit, to retain its honourable appellation,-I glory as I profess myself to be a WHIG, to be of the school of SOMMERS and of LOCKE, to arrange myself in the same political class with those enlightened and virtuous statesmen, who framed the BILL OF RIGHTS and the ACT OF SETTLEMENT, and who, presenting a crown, which they had wrested from a pernicious bigot and his family, to the HOUSE OF HANOVER, gave that most honourable and legitimate of titles, the FREE CHOICE OF THE PEOPLE, to the Sovereign, who now wields the imperial sceptre of Britain. AUG. 4, 1804. · The general correctness of Mr. Bensley's press has superseded the necessity of any long table of errata. Some mistakes, however, have unaccountably escaped the vigilance of observation. Of these the most important are the following: the rest, as it is presumed, are of a nature easily to be corrected by the reader, and are too trivial to merit particular notice. P. 73. 1. 10. for " ενέταξε" τ. ενέσταξε. 166. 1.21. for "Healthy and soft" r. Stealthy and soft. 283. 1. 4. from the bottom,for "Commenus" r.Comnenus. 341. 1. 17. for "eldest" r. youngest. 365. 1. 2. of the Greek quotation: for "xgelov" г. Xgéswv. 405. 1. 5. for "1653" r. 1655. 1. 6. for " 1654” r. 1656. 406. 1. 15. for "Dalton" r. Dutton. 1.31. for " transposed" r. transprosed. 530. 1. 19. for "works" r. work. FAMILIAR EPISTLES, TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN, By ROBERT FELLOWES, A.M. Oxon. THOUGH I. To his Tutor THOMAS JURE. HOUGH I had determined, my excellent tutor, to write you an epistle in verse, yet I could not fatisfy myself without fending also another in profe. For the emotions of my gratitude, which your fervices fo juftly infpire, are too expansive and too warm to be expreffed in the confined limits of poetical metre; they demand the unconstrained freedom of profe, or rather the exuberant richness of Afiatic phrafeology. Though it would far exceed my power accurately to defcribe how much I am obliged to you, even if I could drain dry all the fources of eloquence, or exhauft all the topics of difcourfe which Ariftotle or the famed Parifian Logician has collected. You complain with truth, that my letters have been very few and very fhort; but I do not grieve at the omiffion of so pleasurable a duty, so much as I rejoice at having fuch a place in your regard as makes you anxious often to hear from me. I beseech you not to take it amifs, that I have not now written to you for more than three years; but with your usual benignity and candour to impute it rather to circumftances than to inclination. For, heaven knows, that I regard you as a parent, that I have always treated you with the utmoft refpect, and that I was unwilling to teaze you with my compofitions. And I was anxious that if my letters had nothing else to recommend them, VOL. I. b they they might be recommended by their rarity. And lastly, fince the ardour of my regard makes me imagine that you are always prefent, that I hear your voice and contemplate your looks; and as thus (which is ufually the cafe with lovers) I charm away my grief by the illufion of your prefence, I was afraid when I wrote to you the idea of your diftant feparation fhould forcibly rufh upon my mind; and that the pain of your abfence which was almost foothed into quiefcence fhould revive and difperfe the pleasurable dream. I long fince received your defirable prefent of the Hebrew Bible. I wrote this at my lodgings in the city, not as usual, furrounded by my books. If therefore there be any thing in this letter which either fails to give pleasure, or which frustrates expectation, it shall be compenfated by a more elaborate compofition as foon as I return to the dwelling of the Mufes. I RECEIVED your letters and your poem, with which I was highly delighted, and in which I discover the majefty of a poet, and the ftyle of Virgil. I knew how impoffible it would be for a perfon of your genius entirely to divert his mind from the culture of the Mufes, and to extinguifh thofe heavenly emotions, and that facred and ethereal fire which is kindled in your heart. For what Claudian faid of himfelf may be faid of you, your" whole foul is inftinct with the fire of Apollo." If therefore, on this occafion, you have broken your own promifes, I here commend the want of confiancy which you mention; I commend the want of virtue, if any want of virtue there be. But, in referring the merits of your poem to my judgment, you confer on me as great an honour as the Gods would if the contending mufical immortals had called me in to adjudge the palm of vic 6 tory; |