afraid there can be no possibility-you have great, great trials, my dear Mr Hayley-God Almighty support you under them, and prevent their utterly destroying your precious health!-The sweet boy-he would be a comfort to you. May you find in his talents, his affection, his virtues, and his prosperity, that happiness denied you from so many sources whence you had a right to expect it. What a similarity in your fate to Milton's-the visual powers pained and impeded, though, thank God, not quenched;-and now you mourn a Lycidas, sunk beneath the waters! I scarce know how to quit this mournful subject, even to express our gratitude for your having persuaded Romney to gratify my father, by his possessing, ere he dies, the promised treasure. It arrived late last night; rich, adorned, and invaluable, by the Romneyan powers. My poor invalid was fast asleep in his bed-Lister and Cary, our young bards, were supping with me. They were on fire with curiosity, while the nails were drawing, and highly gratified with contemplating the most masterly portrait their young eyes had ever beheld. I placed it by my father's bed-side at seven this morn.-He wept with joy when I undrew the curtain-wanted to kiss it, and has talked and looked at it all day. I send some verses to Romney, by this post, which but ill express my gratitude. This welcome guest made happy faces at our dinner-board to-day--but in the evening came your letter, and all now is gloom. If you can learn any particulars of this grievous event, I am sure you will communicate them to Except yourself, scarce even those who knew the dear Howel, personally, could be more interested in the sad subject, than Your's, &c. me. LETTER XXIV. DR WARNER. Lichfield, June 3, 1788. I AM more grieved than I can express for Mr Hayley. His love of the gallant unfortunate, like that of Jonathan to David, passed the love of women. Dreadful, that he should thus lose the long expected reward of all his exertions, so truly paternal, for a friendless youth!-Now, as he was returning, crowned with fame, prosperity, and honour, to the arms of his protector. O that direful ocean! how many intelligent and brave spirits has it quenched! It was the grave of an excellent friend and kinsman of mine, a naval officer, who perished with Sir Peter Parker. The picture with which Romney has so nobly presented us, arrived late on Friday night. It makes my poor father very happy. I am flattered by its being thought like me by yesterday's callers!-ah! those callers, they run away with all my leisure; yet I cannot help being glad to see them come in, so strong is my native love of society-every body that looks benevolent, and says nothing ill-natured, interests me. I have read the Regent to be sure it is a strange composition; though I like the Shakespearian method of making the menials speak in prose. The first scene is natural, simple, pathetic. The author has conceived his characters strongly-but his metaphors and similies are an odd set of unresembling resemblances. It appears to me, that Mr Greathead has considerable genius-is dashing-self-sufficient, and utterly without taste; but his play acts well, and, with all its faults, is worth a thousand of such vapid rants as Mrs Cowley's last tragedy, which, she tells us, in her preface, " throws itself, crowned with laurels, at her brother's feet." I wish I could, with truth, say more to Sophia in praise of her friend's play, this same Regent. She will be dissatisfied with less than unallayed and enthusiastic approbation. Adieu! LETTER XXV. THO. SWIFT, Esq. Lichfield, June 5, 1788. It was more than compliment when I said I should be glad to see you. There is much interest for my imagination in such an interview. I admire your poetic genius, and I love your candour, as much as I despise and hate the insensibility of the age to poetic excellence. It has no patrons amongst the splendid and the powerful. The race of Mæcenas is extinct. We find senatorial oratory their sole and universal passion. Absorbed in that pursuit, they can spare no hour of attention for the muses and their votaries. Never was there a period in which the nymphs of the Castalian fountain had a more numerous train; never were they more bounteous with their glow VOL. II. ing inspirations. If we have neither a Shakespeare or a Milton, it is because the fastidiousness of criticism will not permit those wild and daring efforts, which, fearless of bombast and obscurity, often enveloped by them, and always hazarding every thing, enabled our great masters to reach their now unapproachable elevations in the dramatic and epic line. Lyric poetry has risen higher in this than in any age. Suffer me to observe, that you ought not to be discouraged by the apathy of the public taste. It is fatal to the profits of authorship; but "fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise ;" and every poetic writer ought to remember, that the laurel never flourishes till it is planted upon the grave of genius;that Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso were not known to Pope till he was in middle life so strangely had even they fallen into that temporary oblivion, whither it is perpetually the fate of poetry to fall; but, to whatever deserves that name, the hour of emerging will come: Mere "So sinks the day-star in the ocean's bed, And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore verses, it is true, sink like lead in the mighty |