attended to the happiness, beauty, and originality of its similies. Helen's genius is as soaring as her manners are gentle.

The king's recovery, preserving to us our minister, our second Daniel in talents, firmness, and integrity, was a singular mercy to the nation. Our little city made her feast of lights on the occasion, with unanimous alacrity. I marvel at the frontless effrontery with which our nominal whigs disgraced a title I ever thought so honourable, and threw away their mask of patriotism the instant the rising-sun seemed likely to ascend the zenith.

You feel, I dare say, that Dr Johnson would have been of the regent party, had he existed during the late astonishing and sudden change of ground in the parties, which, pulling different ways, make and maintain the balance of the constitution.

a

Another poetic publication, entitled the Loves of the Plants, has just passed the press. It is the work of one of my oldest literary friends,mock heroic poem, of beautiful invention, variety, and descriptive grace; with numbers even more richly harmonious than Pope's. There is a great deal of botanic science in the notes. The author is Dr Darwin, though he does not avow himself; one of Dr Johnson's blockheads, who

lived in Lichfield when Johnson told you that Lichfield had nothing for the mind. I am, with best compliments to Mr Piozzi, dear Madam, yours, &c.

LETTER LXV.

CAPTAIN SEWARD.

Lichfield, April 15, 1789.

I REJOICE in the king's recovery. From my soul I pitied his sufferings, and the queen's affliction; but, great as is the national blessing of such a restoration, I never had an idea of writing verses on the occasion, and am sorry you have set your heart on any such matter. The Laureate must write. It is my opinion no other good poet will. The royal pair have never patronised the bards, and care little for their songs.

This period teems with poetic genius; but George the Third is no Augustus Cæsar to his Virgils, his Ovids, and his Horaces; and Mr Pitt, though a great minister, is not a Mecanas. The King of England will not resemble Alexander, in shedding the tear of envy over the tomb of Achil

les, because no Homer threw poetic lustre over his own achievements..

Adieu, dear Sir, and believe me always yours,

&c.

LETTER LXVI.

DR DARWIN.

Lichfield, May 29, 1789.

WARMLY and gratefully do I thank you for your thrice valuable poetic present. If, at your bidding, I am to consider it as a return for the rhyming tributes, which I have presumed to offer you, it can be but a similar traffic to that of European merchants with Indian chiefs, in which gold and gems are given for glass-beads, and ribands.

The publication of the Botanic Garden, for which I have looked impatiently, will prove to me one of those poetic treasuries, whose resources are inexhaustible. I admire, beyond expression, the skill and happiness with which you have introduced into this work highly picturesque de

scriptions of the mechanic construction, and process of various arts, and of the mythologic marvels best calculated to poetic purposes in almost all religions; while the landscapes are touched with the softness of Claude, or dashed with the strength and sublimity of Salvator.

The unmingled sweetness of the versification, and cloudless radiance of the style, give us music without discords, and landscapes and portraits where every part and feature is prominent and illuminated. The effect of this perpetual and unallayed brilliance, would perhaps be much too dazzling in epic, dramatic, ethic, elegiac, pastoral, or didactic poetry; in none of which ornament ought to be incessant; but its rich profusion is charming in this peculiar work, since each of its descriptions is in itself complete, and may dwell detached upon the mind. We are allowed to close the book whenever we perceive ourselves to grow dazzled by the effect of unremitted splendour; and this, without finding any injurious consequences result to the poem, by voluntary withdrawing our attention for a time; "as we shut our eyes, after a while, against eminences glittering with the sun, and turn them, aking, away upon the brown and common path-way, or upon the grass of the field."

I never read any thing more shudderingly interesting than the Poison Tree of Java. Finely do you call it "The Hydra Tree of Death."

Your notes are highly instructive and amusing even to me, an unscientific reader, respecting the study of Botany, of which I have not time to consider more than the outlines.

Most of your theories in the interludes, are as satisfactory to me, as I feel them to be ingenious; but I differ from you about the analogy between music and her sister sciences, poetry and painting. The mathematical relationship between poetic syllables and musical sounds, has little to do with their congenial powers over the human mind. The real sources of the picturesque, and the stimulative effects of musical sounds, result from the judicious intermixture of discords, hurrying and clashing in descriptive or in animating harshness. The changes into the flat keys express, according to their different combinations, grief, complaint, patience, sullenness, despair; while indignation, terror, or horror are expressed, or excited by what are called the extreme sharps. When the pleasanter keys are resumed, the mind seems relumined; and this is what professors mean when they talk of the light and shade of a concerto or a song. The soft slow tones, avoiding all violent transitions, and sliding into those agreeable changes of