He the least, fair ladies, this one of meeting you on the desert shore, and greeting you in his name. sends you moreover this little scroll.' My dear girls, I send you, per favour of Endymion, the assurance of my esteem for you, and my utmost wishes for your health and pleasure, being ever, So you are determined to be my mortal foe-draw a sword at me, and I will forgive-put a bullet in my brain, and I will shake it out as a dewdrop from the lion's mane―put me on a gridiron and I will fry with great complacency-but-oh, horror! to come upon me in the shape of a dun!-send me bills! As I say to my tailor, send me bills and I'll never employ you more. However, needs must, when the devil drives and for fear of " before and behind Mr. Honeycomb," I'll proceed. I have not time to elucidate the forms and shapes of the grass and trees; for, rot it! I forgot to bring my mathematical case with me, which unfortunately contained my triangular prisms; so that the hues of the grass cannot be dissected for you. For these last five or six days we have had regularly a boat on the Isis, and explored all the streams about, which are more in number than your eye-lashes. We sometimes skim into a bed of rushes, and there become naturalised river-folks. There is one particularly nice nest, which we have christened "Reynolds' Cove," in which we have read Wordsworth, and talked as may be. *** Failings I am always rather rejoiced to find in a man than sorry for; they bring us to a level. has them, but then his makes-up are very good. agrees with the Northern Poet in this, "He is not one of those who much delight to season their fire-side with personal talk." I must confess, however, having a little itch that way, and at this present moment I have a few neighbourly remarks to make. The world, and especially our England, has, within the last thirty years, been vexed and teased by a set of devils, whom I detest so much that I almost hunger after an Acherontic promotion to a Torturer, purposely for their accommodation. These devils are a set of women, who having taken a snack or luncheon of literary scraps, set themselves up for towers of Babel in languages, Sapphos in poetry, Euclids in geometry, and every thing in nothing. The thing has made a very uncomfortable impression on me. I had longed for some real feminine modesty in these things, and was therefore gladdened in the extreme, on opening, the other day, one of Bayley's books-a book of poetry written by one beautiful Mrs. Philips, a friend of Jeremy Taylor's, and called "The Matchless Orinda." You must have heard of her, and most likely read her poetry-I wish you have not, that I may have the pleasure of treating you with a few stanzas. I do it at a venture. You will not regret reading them once more. The following, to her friend Mrs. M. A., at parting, you will judge of. "I have examined and do find, Of all that favour me, There's none I grieve to leave behind, But only, only thee: To part with thee I needs must die, Could parting sep'rate thee and I. "But neither chance nor compliment Us from the Quire above. That friendship Fortune did create Still fears a wound from Time or Fate. "Our chang'd and mingled souls are grown To such acquaintance now, That, if each would resume her own, "Thy lieger soul in me shall lie, Such is the sacred name of friend. "Thus our twin souls in one shall grow, "A dew shall dwell upon our tomb Of such a quality, That fighting armies thither come Shall reconciled be. We'll ask no epitaph, but say, In other of her poems there is a most delicate fancy of the Fletcher kind—which we will con over together. So Haydon is in town. I had a letter from him yesterday. We will contrive as the winter comes on-but that is neither here nor there. Have you heard from Rice? Has Martin met with the Cumberland Beggar, or been wondering at the old Leechgatherer? Has he a turn for fossils? that is, is he capable of sinking up to his middle in a morass? How is Hazlitt? We were reading his Table |