than briefly thank you, my dear young friend, for your two letters yet unacknowledged.

I feel the kindness, in some respects, and the justice in others, of your consolatory remarks on the death of my dearest father; but I feel also that I have lost one of the most precious blessings of my existence, the revered, the so fondly loved, the helpless object of those sweet, though anxious cares, that were their own reward. Now I seem to breathe in an atmosphere of cold silence. I press my pillow at midnight in gloomy serenity,

"And ask no more, at morn's returning ray,
If he has health, that I may bless the day."

The taste for Italian poetry, you have well defended by example ;-but I have always understood that modern Italian poetry is much degenerated; that it is disgraced by quaint ideas, and by playing with particular words, and bandying them about from line to line. This is a practice which always disgusts me, even when I find it in Spenser and Shakespeare. Of the Italian sonnets you sent me, not one is free from that miserable affectation.

Respecting the critics-Burke is a born poet; and though he writes not in rhyme or measure,

the poetic ray illuminates every thing he utters or writes. Blair's criticisms I have not seen. It is long since I read the elder Warton-but I recollect no impression to the honour of his powers, that was quite so vivid as that which I felt from those of his brother. But Joseph Warton has written very fine poetry. His dying Indian is sublime. The shortest work, if it is executed finely, almost equally with the longest, ascertains the possession of genius. He must, therefore, be an able critic, when, divesting himself of prejudice, he descants upon the beauties and blemishes of his brethren.

I regret, not having seen you when you were last at Lichfield. From sounds that would have smote my heart, with, perhaps, fatal violence, and from the last solemn ceremonies, I had fled to a distance that shielded me from their impression. I will never forget Mrs Lister's attention to me in the hours of my anguish. Adieu.

LETTER XCV.

MRS STOKES.

March 26, 1790.

ALAS, my dear friend, your letter, that so kindly rejoiced in a supposed existence, which, amidst all its dimness, was thrice precious to my heart, arrived when that existence had everlastingly ceased.

Long as the dart of death had been shook over the head of my dearest father, I could not see it descend without agony. Time is the great assuager. Already has it begun to give some degree of cheerfulness to my resignation; at least during those hours in which much and various business presses upon my attention, and when a number of my neighbours are calling upon me in succession, and while these vernal suns are gilding every object with hues so lively. Yet find I many minutes in these days, in which I regretfully miss those tender cares which, in their exertion, were so sweet to my spirit, when I protected, sustained, and comforted the dear Helpless, and

tempered the air to my shorn lamb. Alas! no longer does the kiss I used to imprint upon his aged forehead, as he slept, shed its balm over my own rest no longer does intelligence that he lives, and lives exempt from pain, inspirit my uprising. Those pleasures are gone for ever; yet their recollection proves my best cordial.

Glad am I that the demons of disease have been expelled from your dwelling, and that your lovely infants delight you by their expanding genius.

I perfectly recollect how pleasing I thought the tone of Dr Stokes's voice in our first interviewyet, certainly, nothing can be more unlike those of my dear, long lost Honora. Strange that Mrs Butt should think them similar! Though of magical persuasion, they were the reverse of your husband's, which always take a very high key. Honora's tones were so uncommonly low, that, when she was reading any thing querulously plaintive, she could not raise them to the requisite key—yet, like the murmurs of an Eolian harp, they sunk into the soul.

I am gratified that you and Dr Stokes, and Mr Butt, like my sonnet from the Italian, on the destruction of Catania and Syracuse; also that you

twain think with me on the subject of the two great bards, between whose urns differing opinions have created rivalry. But, my dear Mrs Stokes, in this literary dispute between myself and a man of unquestionable and considerable genius, I wonder to see you lay stress on a circumstance so adventitious as the difference of rank between us. While I lament the strength of Mr Weston's prejudices, and blush for the wild enthusiasm of his partiality to myself, I am conscious, from all I have seen, from all I learn of him from others, who have known him long and thoroughly, that he has a warm, generous, and honest heart. Surely that elevating treasure of the bosom, and the consciousness of illuminated talents, qualifies an Englishman to lift up his brow, and to tell himself that, according to the claims of ceremonial precedence, he stands on even ground with any companion, or with his opponent, in any controversy. For my part, I acknowledge I feel no other real superiority but that which virtue and talents give. Were Handel living, I should approach and address him with much more awe than any merely-good sort of body upon the throne of England. People, who have themselves no intellectual superiorities, may be expected to contend for the idle claims of acci