see me, yet were the sensations of this visit pensive, even to pain. I went into the church, where the ashes of my two infant sisters repose. The vacant pulpit, from whence paternal eloquence had so often met my ear, stood before me, as the dim apparition of former happy years.

We went, a large party, from Hopton on Monday, to dine at Matlock. We filled the coach, a whisky, and a gig. I had an idea that we might possibly meet you there, with your Telemachus, and felt disappointed to find this pleasure only ideal. Your purposed re-trip to Lichfield, ere you quit the country, will, I trust, be realized. No more gadding for me at present, so you will be sure to find me at home.

Three letters waited my return, announcing the intended visits of three separate sets of friendsthe Martins; Mr and Mrs Granville, with Mr Dewes, the learned, the interesting, and the good, and his fair and accomplished niece, Miss Port, educated by Mrs Delany, and whose first years of womanhood have been gilded, from day to day, by the smiles of majesty, and by its personal attentions; also, Mr and Mrs Whalley, who will pass most of the month of September with me, and whom I have written to desire Sophia will meet. Already have I written to them separately, to settle these matters-I must now hastily

leave you, to write to a duke, who has sent us a present in the most obliging manner,—to plan the introduction of a young actress of genius to the Bath theatre, and to acknowledge the favour of an author of consequence, who has praised my poems in his Life of Cook, just published.

The pleasures, which, from your late kind visit, I reaped in plenteous harvest, come frequently back to my recollection, and will long continue to do so. Adieu! Adieu!

LETTER XXXIV.

H. CARY, Esq.

Lichfield, Sept. 2, 1788.

MR WHALLEY, one of the dearest of my friends, with his worthy wife, are my guests, and will remain here till Monday next. I know not if you have read his sublimely descriptive poem, Mont Blanc. His spirit is as sweetly attuned to every thing benevolent, sympathetic, and generous, as his imagination to

"The great, the wonderful, the fair."

He finds in your sonnets all that excites delight from each of these sources. We are to read your Horatian Ode to Elliot this morn. Mr W. is impatient to see the author of these charming effusions, whom he already loves.

He shrunk, with the most awakened sense of pain, from the late well-meant, but ill-judged interference, with the energies and exertions of friendship and literature.

Alas! that a natural and bodily infirmity in his son, should have produced such an arrangement of circumstances, as to make a parent, who is himself a scholar, and a sweet-tempered man, give such a gothic instance of authority, that, the surface of it, wears an air of

upon

"Hating learning worse than toad or asp;"

And that it should really have forced him to consider genius as a misfortune to his son.

How I wander from the chief purport of this hasty scribble; it is to desire that you will, if pos sible, ride over, and give Mr W. as much of your society as you can contrive to do.

He is equally impatient to see Lycid, whom I shall ask to dinner to-day-but I am afraid, that, fearful of the contact of poetic spirits, they will not let him come.

"Who would not sigh for Lycidas, who knows

Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme."

Adieu! Adieu !

LETTER XXXV.

EDWARD TIGHE, ESQ.*

Lichfield, Sept. 23, 1788.

You ask me if I know such a word as seductive. It is used perpetually in conversation, and I feel a conciousness of having met it often in elegant writing. We do not find it in Johnson's Dictionary, but it ought to have been there. Since the word seduction is scarce less frequently used than expression, why should it not have been a similar participle. Johnson gives us expressive and oppressive, but neither impressive nor suppressive, though proceeding as obviously from their respective sources. While expressive is on his pages, inexpressive is not, which he should

* The well-known Mr Tighe of Ireland.

have inserted, since Milton makes such fine use of

it in Lycidas.

Johnson's omissions (through carelessness I suppose) are infinite. If you were to find in a letter of mine, "I wrote to Mrs, expressing my sense of her kindness" or "I have an oppressing pain in my stomach," you would hardly censure me for too great verbal license, yet you will look in vain for oppressing or expressing in Johnson.

Concerning the importation of Latin derivatives. All new words, that are at once forcible and harmonious, do surely enrich and adorn our language. It appears to me that we ought to receive them thankfully, from our recollection, that every word, not of English origin, now mature, and received into our dictionaries, and understood even by the misses, had its infancy; which, if national jealousy, and false pride had crushed, our language, at this hour, must have been little less harsh and hissing, than German or High Dutch. The more the English tongue incorporates with the Latin, the more sweet and sonorous becomes our rhythm, the more round and full the periods of our prose; the more easily is it acquired, and pronounced by foreigners; the more widely will our works of genius spread over the neighbouring nations, and, consequently, the higher will rise the reputation of English literature.