LETTER LXXXVI.

To the EDITOR of the GENERAL EVENING

POST.

Dec. 24, 1789.

SIR,-I.am induced, by a paragraph in one of your late papers, to assure you, upon authority, that Miss Seward has no tragedy in contemplation; that if she could imagine she possessed dramatic talents, their exertion would be repressed by recollecting the coolness with which Mr Jephson's three last fine tragedies were received; and by the blindness of our public critics to their excellence. Bold metaphoric language, and strik, ing imagery, in energetic, yet simple phrase, is the Shakespearean style; but if, like Mr Jephson, a writer adopts it, he is reproached with imitating Shakespeare. Every dramatic author is of some school, either of the Grecian, the French, or the English. Which of these is best by their fruits, we have known.

He who writes tragedies, should endeavour to catch a portion of that spirit which reigns over every heart that can feel, and over every under

standing that can receive and retain forcible impressions. To the vigour of thought and language, he should add that just contempt for the pedantic rules of Aristotle which shall enable him to shew the persons of his drama in various situations. So shall he escape the necessity of supplying the place of business, and of incident, by long and frigid declamation. I am, Sir, &c.

LETTER LXXXVII.

MRS TAYLOR *.

Jan. 13, 1790.

No, indeed, and indeed, my dear friend, neither to fickleness or disregard, or shadow of picque, has my silence been owing. Convinced that an alarming oppression at my stomach, and difficulty of breathing, which attacked me last spring, was owing to too much sedentary employment, I reluctantly determined to make longer pauses than usual between my replies to the letters of my correspondents.

Very eloquently did your letter of May the 5th describe the sweetness of maternal happiness. * Late Miss Scott.

That happiness must vary its form, but never will it be more delicious and unallayed, than while your infant draws her sustenance from your bosom.

Heaven yet indulges to my prayers and wishes the existence of my not less dear, because "childchanged father;" but it is an anxious and alarmed life that I live, better, however, far better, than that of lonely orphanism. Your warm praise of my two sonnets in the Gentleman's Magazine for March 1789, delights me. Sonnet-writing suits my scantiness of leisure, better than any other kind of verse composition. The consciousness of being involved in a work of length, often unable to procure an hour in a week to go on with it, would be oppressive. If Miss Williams can obtain seclusion competent to the epic task, which you wish to see attempted by one of us, I shall be glad but nothing is more impossible than that I should procure it; and if I could, Captain Cook, great and good as he was, should not be my hero; because my elegy is in a degree epic, and forming a compendium of his character, his virtues, and his adventures, would involve an inevitable awkwardness, were the same pen to dilate what it had previously, and by choice, compressed.

I think entirely with you, that Miss Williams was not happy in her choice of measure, in the poem on the Slave Trade. I told her so; yet

praised, as with truth I could, its numerous and great beauties.

My critical antagonist on the subject of Dryden and Pope, is not related to Sophia Weston. His profession, music, and organist of Solihul. He has wonderful genius, much knowledge, and an honest generous disposition; but it is an impetuous creature, a child of prejudice, and, as I think, he has convinced you, a much better poet than critic. You have read beautiful sonnets of his in the Gentleman's Magazine for November 1788.

It is very true, as you observe, Johnson appears much more amiable as a domestic man, in his letters to Mrs Thrale, than in any other memorial which has been given us of his life and manners; but that was owing to the care with which Mrs Piozzi weeded them of the prejudiced and malevolent passages on characters, perhaps much more essentially worthy than himself, were they to be tried by the rules of Christian charity. I do not think with you, that his ungrateful virulence against Mrs Thrale, in her marrying Piozzi, arose from his indignation against her on his deceased friend's account. Mr Boswell told me Johnson wished, and expected to have married her himself. You ask who the Molly Aston was, whom those letters mention with such passionate tenderness? Mr Walmsley, my father's predecessor in this

house, was, as you have heard, Johnson's Mecanas, and this lady, his wife's sister, a daughter of Sir Thomas Aston, a wit, a beauty, and a toast. Johnson was always fancying himself in love with some princess or other. His wife's daughter, Lucy Porter, so often mentioned in those letters, was his first love, when he was a school-boy, under my grandfather, a clergyman, vicar of St Mary's, and master of the free-school, which, by his scholastic ability, was high in fame, and thronged with pupils, from some of the first gentlemens' families in this and the adjoining counties. To the freeschool the boys of the city had a right to come, but every body knows how superficial, in general, is unpaid instruction. However, my grandfather, aware of Johnson's genius, took the highest pains with him, though his parents were poor, and mean in their situation, keeping market stalls, as battledore booksellers. Johnson has not had the gratitude once to mention his generous master, in any of his writings; but all this is foreign to your inquiries, who Miss Molly Aston was, and at what period his flame for her commenced? It was during those school-days, when the reputation of Johnson's talents, and rapid progress in the classics, induced the noble-minded Walmsley to endure, at his elegant table, the low-born squalid youth-here that he suffered him and Garrick, to