LETTER LXXV.

MRS KNOWLES.

Lichfield, July 25, 1789.

Ir my purposes and my leisure had not been torn this way and that, from day to day, so many weeks had not elapsed without my acknowledging your charming letter-nor have I been well lately; oppressed respiration, the consequence of too much writing; and yet many whom I love, with the muse, are neglected-these are the mischiefs of extended connections.

My poor father is yet spared to me, though so nearly lost to myself. His convulsive seizures are, however, more frequent, and, alas! he had one last night; but Dr Jones thought the present danger again blown over. I pray God send he may not be mistaken.

So France has dipt her lilies in the living streams of American freedom, and bids her sons be slaves no longer. In such a contest, the vital sluices must be wastefully opened—but few English hearts, I hope, there are, that do not wish vic

tory may sit upon the swords that freedom has unsheathed.

This is the era of miracles-Frenchmen fight for liberty!-apathists elope !—and Mrs Piozzi publishes her travels in a slovenly style, which would disgrace a school-girl, where language like the following, debases almost every page. "It was equally their wonder how his Holiness went walking about with a book in his hand"-and "the King of Naples told them they might do their own way, and he would do his." In short, she has given the exact character of her own work, when speaking of that of another person. She says, "every page has corruption, barbarism, and vulgarity." With these are intermingled strange break-teeth Latinisms, so little in common use, even with her Johnson, that a well-informed woman, however extensive her reading in her own language, not knowing the dead ones, will at once find these volumes too pedantic at times for her comprehension, and perpetually too vulgar for her unindignant endurance; and, O! what a Midas-like decision do they contain upon poetry, when they pronounce the pre-eminence of Merry's Russian Daughter over all other poetry! With these scarlet sins against good taste in composition, yet genius, wit, and good sense, and often very finely written passages, emerge from

amidst the chaos, and make amusement and interest keep pace with indignant wonder.

Mrs Hunter is very good to inquire after me and my pursuits; but they, alas! are forced into most unliterary channels-and you, my friend, are very good to tell me I shall be welcome to your habitation in town. Many kind friends invite me thither-but there is no looking towards the capiltal while my dear infirm father stands so much in need of my tenderness and nursing care-and when I lose him, I think I shall lose all spirits to encounter the inevitable hurries of such an expedition of stepping into the vortex of my connections there.

Ah! my poor father has had another fit, though a slight one; yet, from its never happening before without an interval of some weeks, it alarms me extremely.

I am flattered that my sonnets pleased your Telemachus; yet, O my dear Mrs Knowles! in hours of heart-sick anxiety, such as now roll heavily over my head, dull grows the ear to the voice of praise. Adieu !

LETTER LXXVI.

REV. T. S. WHALLEY.

Lichfield, April 7, 1789.

You were very good to prevent the alarm and uneasiness I must have suffered from dubious and exaggerated reports of an accident so dreadful. Thank Heaven I can now mix congratulations with the sympathy that looks back upon dear Mrs Whalley's danger and sufferings *. I look forward to the, I hope, near approach of that period, in which recovered health and strength shall retain no vestige of the injury. I am sure you will transmit, as soon as it shall be in your power, intelligence so welcome. O! my friend, when you saw Mrs Whalley lying stunned and motionless in the bottom of the water, what an instant of horror and agony for an heart like yours! Its impression can never be effaced; but it will serve to render more dear and precious the consciousness of restored tranquillity, when reason and recollection shall give it back to your spirit. Though

* An overturn in a whisky from an high bank into a deep brook.

still suffering, yet those sufferings are no longer violent, and the gentle invalid has friends by her couch, whose every look will heighten to her heart the value of that existence, the loss of which she has so narrowly escaped.

I had a long letter from Sophia lately, after a silence of many months-and for which she confesses that I am indebted to your solicitations. The epistle, with whatever reluctance it might be commenced, flows with the wonted graceful ease of her pen, and sparkles with all the fires of her spirit. It speaks of a plan in agitation to visit me, accompanied by Helen Williams, the poetic; Albinia Mathias, the musical; and Miss Maylin, the beauteous. Amiable Miss Mathias has a brother of very distinguished talents who, I hope, will escort them.

As to sonnets-I wonder that you should term the breaks, in various parts of the lines, instead of carrying on the sense to the end of the line, breaks which constitute all the grace and beauty of blank verse, "discord for discord's sake," in the sonnet. Mine is not an ear that could like discord for discord's sake any more than yours. The varied pause seems to me equally a characteristic beauty in the sonnet as in blank verse.

It does not surprise me that you should dislike serveral of Milton's sonnets, since several of them