weeks that I can write to any single friend; and what is this seldom-letter to contain? We have neither friends nor connections in common. You may, it is true, amuse me from a thousand sources; but I feel a cheerless consciousness of being unable to make you any return.

I have lately talked about you to a sweet unfortunate who knows you well-the widow of poor Mr Bicknel. Are you acquainted with the romantic circumstances of her early youth? She and her children are left without any provision. It is hard to be dependent upon the bounty of friends, especially after having married rather from discretion than from choice.

Mr Herbert Croft, who wrote the life of Young, in Johnson's Lives of the Poets, is fabricating a dictionary upon a much more extensive plan than Johnson's. He has requested my assistance, together with that of many others in the line of poetic quotations. Mr C. thinks it arrogance in Johnson to expect that the world should take his word for passages being in certain authors, without enabling the reader to consult the passage itself, by directions how and where it can be found. He means also to avoid the invidious contempt Johnson shewed of his contemporaries, by scarce ever quoting them. Respecting the poetic authorities, he means to go as far

back as he can among the elder poets, citing passages of illustration, and descending from them, through those of later times, to the bards of the present day. He desired me to put down any passages for this purpose that happened to present themselves to my recollection.

I have blotted a few sheets at his request; but the minute exactness required in the signals of reference, bore too hard upon the memory, intrenched me in a litter of volumes, and transformed my fingers into ten angry ferrets, from the situation of the passages I recollected often eluding my search. I grew so completely sick of the task, that never shall I attempt to resume it; while doing no more, what I have done wasted many of my hours to just such a purpose, respecting his undertaking,

"As when a rain-drop seeks to augment the ocean."

I wish to send him these sheets, to shew that I had not been quite unmindful of his request. If you think them likely to afford you any amusement that may recompense the trouble of franking them to him for whom they are intended, I will send them open to you.

LETTER XLIII.

MISS HELEN WILLIAMS.

Lichfield, Oct. 19, 1788.

AT length, dear Miss W., it is given me to draw your last kind letter from my hoard of epistolary treasures, and to have the pleasure of replying to it.

I have read your glowing poem, in Dr Kippis's Life of Cook, and felt at once thrilled and warmed by its solemn fire. I long for a more intimate acquaintance with its excellence, than one perusal in a society volume enabled me to be. Dr Kippis has, I trust, received my acknowledgment of the favourable mention he has made of my poem, though I smile to see how curiously he guards against either you or me growing too vain on the subject of our poems on Cook,-deploring, as he does, that our hero had no abler panegyrists.

It is only for one eight days that I have ventured to leave my father, since I wrote to you last. A rich festival of oratorio music allured me to Sheffield. My road lay over the wild hills, and through the luxuriant vales of my native Der

byshire. The pleasures I feel from the contemplation of romantic scenery, is there always heightened by the patriot passion. Within a very little way of the village that gave me birth, and of which my dear father is rector, I could not pass it unvisited. But, alas! having never been there before without him, I felt a dreary and painful void as I roved through the unfurnished apartments of the lonely rectory, and saw the rank grass of the bowling-green waving in at the parlour windows. I went into the church, and gazed on the vacant pulpit-ah! how that vacancy struck upon my heart!

I am glad you think so highly of my ingenious and graceful friend Miss ——. If she had loved reading works of real genius as well as you and I do, what might she not have made of her very fine talents! Nobody speaks, and few write, more eloquently; her great desideratum lies in the want of firm and responsible estimation of works of real genius. I have known her praise compositions of the heaviest mediocrity with enthusiasm, and cold and insensible to most admirable compositions.

I am glad you and Dr M. like my Johnsonian conversation. But Mrs K. is curiously dissatisfied with that tract, because it does not record a long theologic dispute, which succeeded to what I

did put down, and in which she ably defended the Quaker principles from the charge of deism and absurdity, which the Doctor brought against them. She fancies that she appears in a poor eclipsed light on this same manuscript, because she there opposes only strong, calm, and general reasoning to the sophistic wit of her antagonist.

I have looked with your eyes on Collins's newfound ode; and I doubt not that you have looked with mine on the sublime graces of the last Birthday Ode. It casts all other birth-day odes into shade. What a delightful compendium does it present us of the history of this nation! I consider the poetic genius of the laureate as very great, -and that his poetic learning is unequalled.

Mrs Piozzi does me much honour in the style in which you tell me she speaks of your friend. She is herself a brilliant and accomplished being, whose praise is fame.

During the progress of this hasty letter, Mr Boswell sent up, from one of our inns, that he would breakfast with me to-morrow morning. He has so much wit, eloquence, and good humour, that it proves right pleasant to converse with him.

Mr S. is engrossed by attendance upon at least two thousand rare plants and flowers, so that his friends lose many hours every week of his com