LETTER LXXIV.

MISS WILLIAMS.

Lichfield, July 23, 1789.

My dear Miss Williams,-I hope nothing will prevent the partie quarré from realizing the kind purpose of their expedition to Lichfield, so flattering to my wishes. Tell Miss Mathias how much she obliges me by her design of joining it; and that I trust her brother will make up the quintetto.

With the most pleasurable eagerness have I explored the pages of Dr Moore's admirable work. The objection which I have seen some people make to it from the press, and in private letters, appears to me unmeaning. Those who blame Dr M. for making his leading character a villain, must quarrel with Shakespeare for his Macbeth and Richard the Third, and with Richardson for his Lovelace; but, in all the four instances, the light of morality breaks with stronger power from beneath the dark shades of their vices, than it could have done from the virtues of one of those pattern heroes with which fiction abounds.

I should be more inclined to think the digressive histories of so many personages an objection, who have little connection with the principals; they too frequently force the mind into new channels, while it is ardent to pursue those which conduct it through the feelings and fortunes of the capital characters.

I have mentioned to you how delighted, how fascinated, I was with Mrs Piozzi's conversation. Her Anecdotes of Johnson, though animated and amusing, did not, by any means, appear to me on a level with those colloquial attractions; but with her letters in the Johnsonian Collection I was much pleased. To her Travels through Italy I sat down with avidity; with every presentiment in their favour that personal friendship, and the extreme pleasure you and Sophia expressed in them, could inspire; but never was I more surprised than to meet, from Mrs Piozzi's pen, a style perplexed with the most incorrect obscurities of expressions, loaded with idioms, debased by vulgarnesses, and by chamber-maid flippancy; such as-" it is the Gondoleri sure enough;" -"beat," for exceed ;-" near hand," for near ;"too," for also; "by now," for by this time;"let slip," for omit;-" tried at him," for attempted to persuade him ;-" another guess man," for another sort of man;-" comicalest," and "beauti

fulest," for most comical and most beautiful: with a countless number of similar vulgarisms, of most ungentlewoman-like choice, and most unscholarlike frequency. When a Cheapside miss exclaims, "O! he is the beautifulest man!" we smile and pity her want of education; but how can we suppress our indignation when genius, travelled knowledge, classic erudition, brilliant wit, and Johnsonian pupilage, thus disgrace themselves! It seems an insult upon her readers, whom she often convinces of her ample power to have made the style as polished as the matter is interesting; since she often interweaves passages that are very finely written. What can she mean by the silly exclamation, so often intruding into the midst of her sentences, "in good time?" Some cant phrase, I suppose, at which we should stare a little amid the slip-shod privileges of confidential conversation.

With the never-ending profusion of kitchenphraseology, we find stiff Latinisms, out of all common use, even with learned authors—and they agree as ill with the former, as the late fat Duchess of Northumberland's heavy diamond ear-rings, trailing, as I remember to have seen them, when I was a girl, from her long ears, and short neck upon a dirty and coarse muslin handkerchief.

with Mr

With this miracle in literature, we have a miracle in morals more lamentable in the flight of Mrs Of the lady there are a thousand amiable and generous acts upon record, previous to this her fatal frailty; and her lover always seemed one of those undeviating sons of propriety, whose subjected temperament placed him

"Out of the shot and danger of desire,"

For the

family, belonging to this place, the torch of love seems to burn with the fire of Eblis. You understand my allusion, since you have, doubtless, read the Caliph Vathec, that admirable sport of an imagination, at once witty and sublime ;-in whose solemn close, we find a newcreated region of demonism, the sublimity of which Milton himself has not excelled.

What a struggle in France!-while we lament the blood with which it streams, we revere the motives that have opened those vital sluices. O! that oppression and unjust bonds were banished from every government!

You were questionless enchanted with that fine ode of Mr Sargent's, Mary Queen of Scotland,the bright reverse of Mr St John's dull unpoetic

play on that ever-interesting theme ;—a play which the reviewers stupidly alleged to be an imitation of Shakespeare, though there is scarce a metaphor through its pages, and Shakespeare has not three lines without one. But for the ode, whatever may be its obligations to Gray for the prophetic plan, there is great originality in some of the portraits-that of Cromwell has no superior; and, upon the whole, what striking, what mournful grace! what spirited transitions!

Mr S., honoured by your remembrance, desires to return his compliments, and that I should express the pleasure he feels in the idea of soon conversing with you again. I regret that the sweet syren, his daughter, will not have the happiness of being introduced to you, and of varying the pleasures of our party by her melting songs. She is going to Bath to practise Italian singing again with Mr Rauzini.

Adieu. Yours faithfully.