deas, which, on arising in the mind, seem capable of appearing to advantage in the poetic dress. Lay a fine poem in the chosen measure on your table; read it over aloud; endeavour to catch its spirit; observe its pauses and general construction. Thus, a young poet should compose as a student in painting paints, from the best models, not with servile minuteness, but with generous emulation and critical attention.

How far I am qualified to give these instructions may be very questionable; but these are the habits by which I cultivated my own little poetic stock. If the harvest has been tolerably competent, it is to them that I am indebted for the produce. Dr. Darwin tells people he never read or studied poetry. The assertion is demonstrably affected and untrue, from the artful accuracy and studied resplendence of his style; and I know, that through all the years he lived at Lichfield, he was in the habit of amusing a great part of his leisure hours by the most sedulous study of this exalted science, and by very critical attention to the poetic writings of others.

If Shakspeare's talents were the miracles of uncultured intuition, we feel, that neither Milton's, Pope's, Akenside's, Gray's, or Darwin's were such, but that poetic investigation, and long familiarity with the best writers in that line, co-operated to produce their excellence. What folly, then, of the wise, is a disingenuousness so glaring!

I hope your Masonic week at Westella proved pleasanter than such periods have generally proved with that proud miser of his intellectual wealth. Your application of the adversity-passage in Shak

speare to him, is one of the happiest I have known. It comes within Johnson's definition of wit, or, perhaps, he would more properly have termed it genius: "The bringing those things together, between which there is no natural relationship, but of which, when brought into contact, every one perceives the fitness." I give the meaning, not the words of the passage, which have escaped my memory.

I wrote to Mr. Hayley lately. My letter con tained a jocular passage to the following effect: "One of my Yorkshire friends, a gentleman of considerable talents, conversing twice this summer, at Derby, with Mrs. Hayley, returned to us on the coast, enchanted with her wit and spirit. He thinks it impossible the effervescing cordial should ever cloy. If you could contrive to make his wife, who is a very fine woman, elope with you, there might be a double divorce, and he would certainly marry Mrs. Hayley. Pray, if the hymeneal chain has galled you a little, would not that be a much pleasanter way of dissolving it, than that it should be broken by the dark hand of the shapeless despot?" Now, if there were an atom of seriousness in all this, what admirable morality it would be! I have not yet answered the letter you were so good to bring me from Mrs. Hayley. When I do, she shall certainly know how high she stands in your esteem.

My health is not at Lichfield what it was on the coast. I begin to fear the good effects of my journey, and watery discipline, will not be lasting. With the mists of these autumnal mornings and evenings, my difficulty of breathing has returned.

I thank you and dear Mrs. R. Sykes for persisting in an idea so pleasing to me, as the inclusion of Lichfield in your next summer's tour; nor less kind do I take the mutual wish yon express to see me again your guest. Remembrance of the social pleasures I tasted in Yorkshire, must form a powerful spell to lure me thither again; and the days I passed in your pleasant mansion were not the least interesting of that agreeable excursion.

What a length of letter! I feel it less difficult to be silent to those I love, than to speak to them briefly. Say the kindest things for me to the numerous branches of the Westella family, as well as within that house of my long love,

"Where oft for me the cheerful morning rose."

LETTER XLV.

ANNA SEWARD TO MRS. HAYLEY.

Lichfield, Oct. 5, 1793.

IN reading your last agreeable letter, my dear madam, I felt extremely glad to see you acknowledge that the summer was passing pleasantly. It is too seldom that people express a conscious enjoyment of the present. While regret is busy with the past, and expectation with the future, ennui usurps the place of cheerfulness, and thinks coldly of the social, and yawns through the studious hour. You are happy in a sprightlier temperament, and grateful in confessing the pleasure it affords you. Glad also am I to find that my old friend, Mr.

R. Sykes, stands so high in your good graces. His wit and worth deserve that honour. He desires me to assure you of his esteem and best wishes, and of his fervent desire to converse with you often. I wrote to the dear bard lately, and rallied him upon the intenseness with which Sykes expresses his delight in your imagination, and in the gaiety of your spirit.

While surrounded at Bridlington by those beloved beings of the Westella house, we all formed a very pleasing intimacy with Mr. and Mrs. John Gisbon. He has the kind of disposition, the species of talents, which I should most desire in the person I wish to call friend. The fair Millicent has been very fortunate.

"She did not blunt on fops her beauty's dart,

But boasts the triumph of a letter'd heart :"

And I perceive, on intimacy, a gentleness and goodness about her, which promises to deserve the blessings of her lot, and to secure his happiness who chose her.

Yesterday brought me an odd, though ingenious letter, from a Mr. Geary of Leominster, of whom, except one or two former letters on literary subjects, I know nothing. His last exhorts me to vindicate miss Hannah More's character from the malevolent aspersions which, he says, Mrs. Smith has cast upon it in her novel, Desmond, under the title of Mrs. Manby.

I have not read Desmond, and this is the first hint that has reached me of any such attack. If it is so, Mrs. Smith has done very unwisely, as well as unjustly; but Hannah More wants no cham

pion; her virtues and talents stand far above the reach of such senseless calumny:

"Which will pass by her as the idle wind,
Which she respects not."

Have you read Helen Williams's new publication? It is finely written, and infinitely interesting; but I tremble for her life in that murderous city, from the bold truths this work contains in testimony against those detestable Jacobins. It is to be regretted that she is not, by this time, more aware that anarchy, with all its tyrannous mischiefs, must result from the prevalence of democratic influence.

You would be sorryish to hear, that poor Moll Cobb, as Dr. Johnson used to call her, is gone to her long home. If you saw the ridiculous, puffing, hyperbolic character of her in the public papers, it would make you stare and smile at the credence due to newspaper portraits. Those, however, who draw them in colours so false and glaring, are very reprehensible. This was the dis

grace of a pen capable of far better things than such a tribute of gross and mean flattery to the vanity of the surviving relation. Its author well knew the uniform contempt with which Johnson spoke both of the head and heart of this personage, well as he liked the convenience of her chaise, the "taste of her sweetmeats and strawberries," * and the idolatry of her homage.

Nanseous, therefore, was the public and solemn

See his Letters to Mrs. Piozzi: letters the 114th and 134th.