of the heart, should generally keep at awful distance from themes that require the meek subjection of the passions.

In consequence of your having so warmly admired Southey's Hymn to the Penates, I have reperused it attentively. I like it much better than Akenside's Hymn to the Naiads, with which the author draws it into a sort of comparison. Akenside is a favourite poet of mine; but that hymn, though stately in its style, and profoundly classical, appears to me, I could almost say, profoundly dull. Southey's hymn opens beautifully, and has several lovely passages, but I think it spun out too long, and that it has great moral defects. After the full stop in the seventh line, the verses to the middle of the thirteenth are classic lumber, heavy, and superfluous; then they become interesting again, and so continue till the absurd disgusting invocation to the benignant powers, that they will permit him to place misanthropy beneath the protection of his Lares. Falsely has this poet declared the origin of his acknowledged favourite; never could simplicity and benevolence produce such a monster!-no crimes of individuals, no injuries received from an individual, nor yet a general misconstruction of his character, ever made a good man misanthropic.

It is a pleasing fancy to suppose the Penates

are the spirits of the dead; but it is interrupted by the digression in praise of truth, which is there totally out of its place, and is one of those passages which encumber the poem; neither do we like, in the train of thought this composition inspires, to have our attention drawn off to Spencer and his allegories.

Then it is a bold assertion, that the regions of heaven can give the human soul no such true delight, as it must feel in the permission to hover round the objects it loved and has left on earth. Waving its presumption, the passage is interesting and poetic. That presumption adds nothing to its fanciful charms.-How easy to have avoided it thus, while the inapposite digression might have been lopt away-addressing the Penates,

"A dearer interest to the human race

Links

you, yourselves the spirits of the dead; Nor yet unworthy of an angel's bliss

To hover o'er its earthly haunts, and feel

When with the breeze it glides around* the brow
Of one beloved on earth."

We love the apostrophe to his lost friend, Mr Seward, who was my distant relation, and the

Glides around, instead of wantons round. The word wantons is too gay for the occasion.-S.

little history of Syrophanes, not naturally connected with the subject of the poem, but which yet we should be sorry to spare.

The passage which begins, "Often at eve my wanderings," is lovely, till again the author turns out of his interesting path to libel our laws, and profanely to invoke his Maker not to hurl his thunder on the felons—implying, that it ought to descend rather on those who made and who administered the edicts that punish them.

The remainder is a dull heavy prophecy of a state wholly incompatible with the nature of man,-what never was, and what never will be; and thus, like the " baseless fabric of a dream,” it leaves nothing on the mind or heart; but this censure respects only the conclusion, for there are many touches and impressive passages in the course of the poem; though I still avow a preference, as poetry, of the Ode on New Year's Day in that volume, to this its Hymn to the Penates—since that is, though shorter, perfect.

Supernatural horrors are the taste of the times Have you seen the Ancient Mariner. It is the greatest quiz of a composition I ever met with— but it has very fine strokes of genius. The style of obsolete simplicity suits the unmeaning wildness of its plan, and of its terrific features. The moral of this oddity is not less defective in ration

or M

ality than the plan. Enormous punishments are decreed to a trifling crime; and, besides that, two hundred people, innocent of even that trifling crime, are its victims, while the person who committed it escapes death. Of the softer beauties of writing, rare are the instances in the Ancient Mariner; yet, in one verse, they shed their mild light. My recollection of that verse is probably not accurate, but it is to this effect:

"The sails kept on a gentle noise,

Like a little huddling rill,

All in the leafy month of June,

That to the sleeping woods at night,
Singeth a quiet tune."

The rhymes have nothing like regularity, neither has the measure, as to quantity; and old words are used, which have so long been discarded, that they cannot, but by the context, be understood;such as, "they nold," for they did not; and "the eldrich deck," whose meaning none of us can guess.

I adjure you to publish your Sunday Morn in some of the public prints. If you cannot conquer an unfounded dislike to be poetically known, at least print it anonymously; yet, for our sex's credit, say, "by a Lady." For the sake of rational piety, deprive not the rising youth of this age of a composition so beautifully calculated to

endear public worship to their taste, and to their

heart! Adieu! adieu!

LETTER XXX.

MRS JACKSON.

Lichfield, Jan. 2, 1799.

THE receding influence of that hope, which, in compliance with my wishes, you were so good to invite, disappoints me much. Thus life glides away, and society with our kindred spirits, one of its dearest charms, is dealt to us thriftily. Nor is that all; arbitrary circumstances, not content with their withholding power, will seldom leave those minds which possess resources to inspirit retirement, the choice of preferring it to uninteresting companionship; to that sort of association which gives the understanding and the imagination sensations, similar to those the body feels when beneath a roof too low to admit its standing upright.

It is very true, the style of our letters, even without any purpose of insincerity, must not always be depended upon as barometers of our cheer