call them, colloquial barbarisms of every kind, to which the Johnsonian Latinisms, and display of classic learning are extremely heterogeneous.-Adieu.

LETTER LXXII.

REV. HERBERT CROFT.

Lichfield, July 10, 1789.

SIR-I was much amused with your very ingenious and witty letter, which I received from Mr Hardinge. I do not wonder that you think his having thrown aside my packets to you, (which I desired him to frank and forward,) as useless things, not worth either your attention or his, an omission that is but similar to that of not counting over soiled linen before it goes to the washwoman; and, as such, to be laught off, and thought of no more.

I am not vain enough to fancy, that Mr Hardinge's gay contempt of any little exertions of mine, is the least degradation to his virtues or his genius; and, I am sure, the proofs he has given me of that contempt, however they may mortify

my self-consequence, will never induce me to endeavour, for a single moment, to depreciate their excellence; but his unpoliteness has given a certain jar to my feelings, that renders it irksome to me to write to him. My correspondence was, considering the scantiness of my leisure, distressingly extended when he sought me first; and, though I told him so, he continued to employ me perpetually in sending him copies after copies of all the verses with which, from time to time, he favoured me; the cry was still," I have mislaid the last transcript you sent me of my ode, or my sonnet,―pray indulge me with another?” and, at last, after having repeatedly sent him copies of every individual effusion of his muse, he coolly desired me to get a little book and copy them all into that, as he had mislaid a number of the single transcripts; he made this modest request just as I had discovered that he had not chosen to take the trouble for me, of directing and forwarding three packets to Oxford, which had cost me all the leisure I could command during several weeks; and upon my resenting it, turned that resentment into every sort of ridicule. After such treatment, I can no longer write to Mr Hardinge with pleasure. It is necessary to my health to abridge my correspondence; and it is but fair to

strike those from my list who have shewn the least value for what I write. Lavater has justly observed, that there is no disgrace in being once used impolitely, but it is consummate weakness voluntarily to subject ourselves to the repetition of contumelious neglect; and yet Mr Hardinge knows that this is not the first instance he has shewn of marked inattention to my requests.

I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your most obedient servant.

LETTER LXXIII.

COURT DEWES, Esq.

Lichfield, July 20, 1789.

INDEED, my dear ingenious friend, just and excellent as you are, it seems to me utterly incomprehensible that you, who have been contemporary with Gray, Collins, Mason, Akenside, Hayley, the two Wartons, Goldsmith, Johnson, Churchill, Shenstone, Beattie, Langhorne, Anstey, Cowper, Jephson, Sargent, Crowe, and that first of poetic painters, Darwin; with those miracles of unassisted genius, Chatterton and Burns,—that

you should fancy the light of poetry, in the period which has produced them, but as the faint reflúx of the lunar effulgence, borrowed from the set suns which lighted the reigns of William, Anne, and George the First.

O thou, in this instance, twin spirit of Shaftesbury, who made those suns in thy consideration into moons, nay moons enveloped in mists; what spell is it that so fascinated him, and which so fascinates thee, and made you both talk of diminished strength and faded fires?—he in the period you now exalt, and you in one yet more distinguished by the light of genius?

I lately received a new proof of the progress made in the poetic art since Dryden's time. Till last winter, I never happened to meet with Denham's Cowper's Hill, which Pope so highly praised. His praises have been echoed by so many writers since, that I took the merit of that poem upon trust, admired the lines upon the Thames, so often quoted, and reckoned upon the pleasure I should have in reading it, when chance might throw it in my way. But I was amazed when I read it, for the Thames lines appeared to me as almost the only good lines in the composition. Stiff inharmonious numbers; forced thoughts; indistinct landscape; moral reflections

trite and not naturally arising from the subject. I read Crowe's Lewesdon Hill with it, and exulted in the superiority of the modern.

By the way, those justly admired lines upon the Thames, are but a sort of parody of a passage in an old English poet, many years prior to the birth of Cowper's Hill,-T. Cartwright's panegyric upon Ben Johnson, published in 1651. Behold them,

"Low without creeping, high without strain'd wing,
Smooth, yet not weak, and, by a thorough care,
Big without swelling, without painting fair."

Your sentiments of Mrs P's travels are mine, -admirable matter, in, as it should seem, chosen meanness of language. We can never enough wonder that she should choose to fill her lamp of knowledge, wit, and information, with train-oil in general, since she supplies it, at intervals, with that of cloves and cinnamon.-Adieu.