he shares. The botanists all love each other the better for the knowledge and vegetable treasures

that each possess.

Ah! why do not the bards thus also? Envy throws not brands into the conservatory-Why will she so often throw them upon the lyre?

LETTER XXXVI.

TO GEORGE HARDINGE*, Esq.

Lichfield, Sept. 10, 1786.

"I Miss Seward remembers Mr Hardinge!" Ah! dull of spirit, if the traces of those few hours, in which she was honoured with his conversation, had faded in her memory!

On their first meeting, he was so good, at Mr. Boothby's request, to read a few passages from the Paradise Lost, as he sat on the window of her dressing-room. "Poetry was then poetry indeed." The ear of her imagination has often brought back his cadences. Born an enthusiast,

* Nephew to Lord Cambden, and Attorney-General to the Queen.

time has but little abated that propensity, in despite of her consciousness, that, in this marble age, nothing is more unfashionable.

Yes, Sir, from the retired situation in which my life has passed away, I have followed you through your brighter and more elevated track, with distant but earnest gaze, and rejoiced in your expanding fame.

Two of your sonnets were given me, to the Fountain, and to the Lyre of Petrarch. With them, amongst others, have I often combated the unmeaning assertion of pedants, that the legitimate sonnet suits not the genius of our language, producing those * Avignon little gems as its perfect refutation.

J

While these arise to the honour of Mr Hardinge's genius, his generous exertions to promote the amiable and highly ingenious Miss Helen Williams's interest, in the subscription to her poems, do equal honour to his benevolence.

My mother's death, and my father's incapacity for every kind of business, have involved me in much of that employment which seems the contradiction of my fate; so that, together with an inconveniently extensive correspondence, and the social pleasures, by which I am very seducible,

* The sonnets alluded to were written at Avignon.

little time is left for versifying; yet several thousand lines, of former composition, in the heroic, lyric, and sonnet measure, have long slumbered in my writing-desk, vainly waiting the always receding hour of transcript and revision.

The terms in which you mention my poetical novel, Louisa, gratify me extremely. I know it is the best and ablest of my publications. There may certainly be a best, even where nothing is very good.

Flattered that you preserve an agreeable remembrance of our long past and transient interviews, and that you think the employments of my muse worth this inquiry, I remain, Sir, &c.

LETTER XXXVII.

REV. T. S. WHALLEY.

Lichfield, Sept. 23, 1786.

My late long silence has been involuntary. I accounted for it in a recent letter to you at Strasbourg. Mention not my miscellany; I am hopeless about it. Without time to revise my own writings, people persecute me with requests to

examine and correct those of others. It is an heavy evil of authorism. Several poetic tasks, and some prose ones, the execution of which is important to my wishes, lie before me, as water before the lip of Tantalus. My Horatian odes are almost the sum-total of my poetry during the last twelve-months. Not only by yourself, and several other literary friends, but by the public prints, I am exhorted to go through with the odes of Horace. They, and you also, flatter me, that such a work would be a valuable acquisition to English verse; but I have no time; besides, there are many which it would be impossible to render interesting, and others, and which are unfit for the female pen..

Let us turn to a more heart-engaging theme. Ah! dear, and ever dear friend, your letter from Strasbourg to Sophia, delights me, as breathing an homeward air; yet, what it says of your health, is far from being all I wish. The death of excellent Mrs E. Whalley has, doubtless, injured it, through the generous excess of your sympathetic feelings. The reconciling power of time, will, I trust, ere long, brace your nerves again, and restore the tone of your constitution. Neither is our Sophia well. She now seeks to renovate a disordered frame on the dreary shores of Abberistwith.

I am just returned from paying a delightful visit, of three weeks, to my friends, Mr and Mrs Granville. Accomplished and excellent Mr Dewes was of our party. The situation of their villa, Calwich, near Ashbourn, is as singular as it is beautiful; standing on the extremest verge of a large and very lucid sheet of water, through which runs the river Dove. It comes winding down from Dovedale to Ileham, and from thence to Calwich. Gentle hills, the nurselings of the peak mountains, form a semi-circle round the lake, opposite the house, at about a mile's distance. It is quite fairy-land, so verdant are its lawns, so crystal its streams. The minds of its owners are cultivated as the valley, and clear as the lake.

The lady of that lake is young, pretty, graceful, and admired, but loves her home and domestic duties, as well as it is natural for those to do, who bear about them no such magnetism, either of person or manners, to attract attention, or stimulate flattery. Yet is not Mrs Granville cold

unsocial; she mixes with the large neighbourhood around her, with cheerful pleasure; but her most enjoyed days are those in which books, needle-works, and the conversation of her more intimate friends, give wings to the hours.

The weather was not propitious to the outdoor pleasures of this interesting visit. In days