"imp their eagle wings," a delighted spectator and auditor of their efforts. It was here, that Miss Molly Aston was frequently a visitor in the family of her brother-in-law, and probably amused herself with the uncouth adorations of the learnned, though dirty stripling, whose mean appearance was overlooked, because of the genius and knowledge that blazed through him; though with "umbered flames," from constitutional melancholy and spleen. Lucy Porter, whose visit to Lichfield had been but for a few weeks, was then gone back to her parents at Birmingham, and the brighter Molly Aston became the Laura of our Petrarch. Fired, however, at length, with ideal love, and incapable of inspiring mutual inclinations in the young and lively, he married, at twenty-three, the mother of his Lucy, and went to seek his fortune in London. She had borne an indifferent character, during the life of her first husband. He died insolvent, leaving his three grownup children, dependent on the bounty of his rich bachelor brother in London, who left them largely, but would never do any thing for the worthless widow, who had married "the literary cub," as he used to call him. She lived thirty years with Johnson; if shuddering, half-famished, in an author's garret, could be called living.

During her life, the fair and learned devotee,

Miss H. Boothby, in the wane of her youth, a woman of family and genteel fortune, encouraged him to resume his Platonisms. After the death of this wife, and this spiritualized mistress, Mrs Thrale took him up. He loved her for her wit, her beauty, her luxurious table, her coach, and her library; and she loved him for the literary consequence his residence at Streatham threw around her. The rich, the proud, and titled literati, would not have sought Johnson in his dirty garret, nor the wealthy brewer's then uncelebrated wife, without the actual presence, in her saloon ď Apollon, of a votary known to be of the number of the inspired.

Into the minds of the parents of our poetic Nisus and Euryalus, Cary and Lister, a prejudice has been instilled, that their imaginative talents are more likely to be a misfortune than a blessing to them. Beneath its influence they have turned a jaundiced eye upon their friendship, and actually prohibited all epistolary correspondence between them, though they are suffered to visit sometimes. Lister is of our cityCary's habitation eight miles distant. I must observe, that though they have thus needlessly mortified and hurt the tender minds of these youths, yet are Mr and Mrs Lister visibly proud of their son's uncommon talents, and sedulous in

dustry-they boast of the sweetness of his temwhich indeed shines out of his clear blue eyes, per, for he is beautiful as a vernal morning; somewhat, however, too decisive in his opinions, for years so blossoming. Cary's disposition is more saturnine. I think his genius the stronger of the two, but he has the same tenacious spirit of decision, the same thirst after knowledge, the same unwearied application, the same exemption from every immoral tendency. He is going to Oxford, Lister to Cambridge. This choice of different universities is, I apprehend, purposed, lest the enthusiasts should feed each others poetic flame. How finely is this pusillanimous dread delineated in Mr Hayley's Essays on Epic Poetry.

Adieu! my dear Mrs Taylor; never, for a moment, believe it possible I can forsake such friends as yourself, that have been

a

Through twenty summers ripening in my heart."

LETTER LXXXVIII.

H. CARY, ESQ.

Jan. 21, 1790.

THANK you for the prose translation of Filicaja's Sonnet on the degeneracy of Italy, her desertion of her ancient valour, and devotion to indolence, shadowed forth by allegoric allusion to the infidelity of a once faithful wife to an honourable husband. In your prose of his sonnet to the ingulfed cities, my versification of which has had the honour to please you, I acknowledged, for I felt the extreme sublimity of the concluding apostrophe. It is an idea, an image far above the achievement of a prose-man's conceptions, however naturally strong, however cultivated by literary application; it is born of genius only. Arise, ye overwhelmed cities! display your vast portent, and let your horrible skeletons be dreaded by all ages!"

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But for the conclusion of the sonnet in question, which you say nearly equals the other in sublimity." Sleep on, vile adultress, till the avenging sword rouses, and slays thee in the em

braces of thy paramour"—it is a spirited, but surely not a sublime apostrophe; no creation of the poet's fancy, but furnished by common life, a threat which connubial vengeance has often executed. Neither life nor human possibility presented the other, which thrills us with an indistinct, yet horrible image, that, like Milton's personification of death, is more dreadful, because the imagination refuses to present it distinctly.

The sonnet on Italian degeneracy would, on the whole, perhaps, have appeared finer to me than it does, were I not aware from whence the idea is drawn, and of its inferiority to its original in the Sacred Writings. Your avowed blindness to their numerous sublimities is one of those prejudices that dims, at times, the general lustre of your judgment. You will, perhaps, retain that blindness when you have examined the sources of Filicaja's ideas in this second sonnet, which I shall here present to you;-but if you do retain it, you will more powerfully uphold your own strange idea, that a poetic imagination incapacitates the mind for a poignant and judicious perception of poetic excellencies and defects in the writings of others, than any nonsense with which Boileau may furnish you in its favour..

I have not time to collect the ensuing quotations from examination—I give them from me