cause the elbow of a slender young woman is not a pretty thing, quarrel with a light and beautiful nymph, because she has elbows.

Aн, Madam, it is a too-confiding benevolence which induces you to suppose there must have been some good, even in such a being as that on whom Elizabeth's ill fate wasted her youth, her affections, and her virtues; something on which softened remembrance might dwell, as palliatives to the faults which ruined himself, and deprived him of the means to support his wife and children. But no! callousness and outrage, united with the vices of sottishness, unchastity, and extravagance, to rob the grave of its power, to screen from her recollection the miseries of their union. She wept, indeed, beneath the first intelligence of an event, startling, however inevitably welcome. She wept, from the consciousness of his being the father of her children but it would

be weakness in the extreme, if these are not the last tears she will ever shed for him.

I had, indeed, great pleasure in finding dear Mrs Port cheerfully alive to every agreeable impression, and disposed to throw all the lustre of partial regard over things which had, perhaps, essentially but little claim to the value which she appeared to set upon them.. I do not, however, include in that number Mr Saville's obliging exertions to animate the evening we all passed together at Matlock, with the united charms of poetry and music. He alone, of all the warbling tribe, breathes at once, in his songs, the harmonic and the poetic spirit; and this, from powers which mere musical science, ability, and taste, however perfect in their kind, cannot give, without a combination of genius, sensibility, and knowledge, which are of higher extraction than that of the tinkling strings.

The rulers of our cathedral are a little be-demoned, or much be-deaned, which is nearly the same thing. They are demolishing our pretty choir at a vast expence, and to the long exclusion of the finest choir-service in the kingdom. They have shut her gates against her celebrated minstrels; turning them adrift to lose, or, at least, injure their voices by the rust of inaction. Yes, they are pulling down the carved work with axes

and hammers." I question not Mr Wyatt's power of bestowing a great accession of future beauty; but he says it must be four years ere the alterations will be completed, and the service resumed. A four year's silence for "the pealing organ, and the full-voic'd choir!" Four years! Ah! how many of us, who delight in their power to lift the rising spirit in warmer devotion to its God; how many of us, before they are elapsed, may be slumbering in the impervious silence of the grave! Four years! no inconsiderable portion of human existence! Alas! " a few lagging winters, and a few wanton springs, and the life of man is at an end.” Of those which shall be allotted to my friends at Hopton, may neither disease abridge the number, nor affliction darken the course!

LETTER LX.

REV. WH. BAGSHOT STEVENS OF REPTON.

Lichfield, April 11, 1787.

YOUR Ode to Delius is beautifully rendered. O! the immeasurable difference between a poet's translation and that of those insipid versifiers, who

brew Horace in English, and make dead smallbeer of him! Your Ode* is champagne from the

* Ode to Delius, from Horace, Book 11, Ode 5th, by the Rev. Mr Stevens.

"Plung'd in the troubled tempest of distress,
Or borne on fortune's favouring bi'lows high,
Weak fears, vain insolence, alike repress,

Remembering still my Delius thou must die :

"Die, whether grief distain each sadden'd hour,
Or pleasure bloom perpetual in the glade,
Where the stream glances by the festal bower,

And pines with poplars blend their grateful shade.

"O! hither haste, thy wines, thy perfumes bring,
And pluck thy roses ere their sweets decay,
Whilst fate and fortune, ever on the wing,

And youth's short lustre cheer thy passing day.

"Soon shall thy purchas'd pomp no more be thine,
Thy groves, thy fountains, and thy villas fair,
For thee no more thy hoarded treasures shine,
No more for thee, but for thy grasping heir.

"Wealth gilds the victim, but it cannot save;
The final power to one impartial doom,
Compels alike the monarch and the slave,

Ah! hope not pity from th' insatiate tomb ↓

"Fate ceaseless moves her universal urn,
Where human lots in mix'd confusion lie;
Each, soon or late, must issue in its turn,

And the sad prize of mortals is to die."

vines of Aonia. The first, second, third, and fifth stanzas charm me. The fourth is very well; but I think less beautifully rendered than the others. The last line of the concluding verse does not quite satisfy me. I feel a want of ac

curacy in it, but shall perhaps find difficulty in explaining the nature of my objection, viz.

"And the sad prize of mortals is to die."

Dying is an action, though generally an involuntary one. Is not a prize rather something that we obtain than that we do? To die is properly called the doom of mortality; but can it as properly be called a prize or gift which it receives? Death might indisputably so be termed; but dying, being an action, I think cannot. I translated this ode some time since. That * sion of mine is from a prose translation, given me by my learned and ingenious friend Mr Dewes. It is more paraphrastic, and probably much more amenable to just criticism than yours, drawn from the pure well-head.

ver

Let me exhort you not to suffer the stupid impertinence of our hireling critics to repress the exertions of your genius, assured, as I trust you

* It will be found in the author's Miscellany, with her other translations and paraphrases of Horace's Odes.—S.