The mildness of last winter has, I imagine, been favourable to the extent of my poor father's life, that sits wavering upon his weak frame,

"Like the light down upon the thistle's beard,
Which every breeze may part."

Yet, how many people, in whose veins the tide of health ran with strong and flattering current, have sunk beneath its stagnation, since they, even they, bid me not flatter myself on the subject of his life.

When you present my affectionate regards to Dr Stokes, present them also to Mr and Mrs Butt; nor neglect observing to the latter, that I would write to him, but for the hope of conversing with him orally, perhaps even before this letter arrives at Kidderminster-by the way, that is a noble bull; but let it pass, since it passes quietly, and does not roar. But the sight of its very tail is enough to sicken one of employing a pen, which seems at present disposed to make bulls as readily as Neptune's trident made horses. Adieu!

LETTER XXI.

WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Lichfield, May 10, 1788.

You have made my poor old father very happy, by kindly exerting yourself with our beloved Romney, to procure us the possession of that highly valuable present, which the paternal eye longs to behold, ere its light grows too dim to discern the excellence of art.

Earlier had I acknowledged the receipt of your kind letter, but, within this past fortnight, I have been so unwell with a violent cough, and inflammation upon my lungs, that all the time in which I was able to write, has been given to letters on indispensable business, and to the composition of a sermon, requested by an ingenious young clergyman of our neighbourhood, who has just taken orders, and who wishes to make his first essay in the pulpit with something of my writing.

If I know any thing of my talents, sermonizing is their fort. I have written several, and I think nothing of mine so good of its kind. Wherever I meet with oratorical prose, from the pen of

genius, it is not less dear to me than poetry. My imagination, though perhaps it cannot justly boast that splendid origin, loves to find itself at liberty to pursue serious, pathetic, and elevated subjects, free from the shackles of rhyme and mea

sure.

The young bards were very happy in reading your indulgent mention of their writings. Never did more fervently admiring votaries bow before your shrine.

A female friend of mine, Miss Scott, has just published a poem, entitled The Messiah. She has considerable talents, and her numbers are easy and sweet. We have been friends and correspondents more than ten years; though, from the remoteness of our respective homes, we have -been only once in each other's company, and that but for a single day. She is an excellent woman. Her filial piety has been exemplary. The 9th of this month was to be her wedding-day. The bridegroom has waited for her, with Jacobean constancy, nearly twice seven years; for she would not marry while her aged mother lived, whose wretched health demanded her watchful and unremitting cares. Last winter, sorrow and liberty came to her at once from the grave of a beloved parent.

› Miss Scott has a serious and religious mind;

but her faith is Arianism. So also is his, to whom, I conclude, she has by this time given her hand; and whose proselyte I believe she is, for her father was a Clergyman of the Church of England.

On her lover's way through Lichfield, once in two years, I have had frequent opportunities of conversing with him. He defends his opinions ably. They are those of the late Dr John Jebb, whose abilities were unquestionable; whose manners, as an husband, a friend, and companion, were angelically amiable; and whose sincerity in his religious opinions,

"His downright violence, and storm of fortunes,
Did trumpet to the world."

Miss Scott sent me extracts from her Messiah some time since. I insinuated my apprehension, that the subject was not the happiest for poetry, when drawn out into historic precision; and that a poem of Pope's, bearing that title, and already in possession of the general admiration, would make against the reception of her's. I thought it a duty of friendship, my opinion asked, to give it freely.

However, many of her literary friends, who had fair hopes and confidence in the place of my

doubts, have persuaded her to publish it. The poetic critic in the Monthly Review is her personal friend, a circumstance much in favour of her poem.. For, strange as it is, every thing upon which those gentlefolks, the public critics, frown, "weak masters though they be," sinks into a temporary oblivion, though glowing with the purest fires of the muses; sure, indeed, hereafter to emerge to the disgrace of their judgments, and to prove them of the never-to-be-extinct race of Zoilus.

By the way, I am assured, that a certain female author, of the mediocre order, has, in the Critical Review, the post of censor-general of all the works of fancy, both in prose and verse. Indeed, the coldness with which Mrs Brooke's charming writings are mentioned in that work, smells strong of rivalry. When moderately ingenious scribblers sit in judgment upon the works of their superiors, it requires great integrity of heart to do justice to talents that have eclipsed their own in the particular sphere in which they wished to shine.

Unsustained by that integrity, you generally find them bestowing much warmer praise upon moderate than upon sublime compositions.

The note in Miss Scott's poem observes, that she caught the idea of her late work from a pas