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hospitable pleasure. Such is the power of ideal association.

Colonel Barry sends you his compliments, and talks with enthusiasm of your talents and graces.

LETTER LXIX. ·

WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Lichfield, August 17, 1787.

THANK you, my dear bard, for your last letter. It has the kindness and the length of those former epistles, which were so much my pride and delight; yet as I seem fated to tell you whatever arises in my mind, immediately resulting from what has fallen from your pen, I must observe, jocularly tho', that however gratified with the general kindness of your last, I am not flattered by your placing your friendship for me on a level with your esteem and respect for a certain august personage. Conscious that you see characters as they are, undazzled by rank, even by the highest rank, I am ready to exclaim, with Ophelia,—

"No more but so!"

I have certainly mentioned to you, that the rage of alteration had laid our ancient and beauti→ ful cathedral in temporary ruins, and shut her gates against her minstrels at least during two, and perhaps several more, years. The celebrated Wyatt is here, planning changes, which do not appear necessary, and which will be dreadfully expensive. Whatever of splendour and of beauty the unquestionable taste of the architect may achieve, the idea of them nothing recompenses to the lovers of sacred music, the silencing, during a period of such melancholy duration,

"The pealing organ, and the full-voic'd choir."

Mr Wyatt's manners please me. I reminded him of the beautiful compliment which you have paid to his genius somewhere in your works. Assured that I could find the passage, I promised to look for it. It eludes my search. Pray inform me where it is; for he, to whom it was justly paid, has never seen that gratifying tribute to his genius and art.

I have been much gratified by the reports made to me, by Mr Erasmus Darwin, of the etismation in which Lord Harrowby and Dr Darwin hold my Ode on General Elliot's return from Gibral

tar. The Doctor has always spoken to me of that nobleman, as a man of much poetic taste. Mr E. Darwin said, that, in a strict critical scrutiny of this little poem, they praised often and warmly, and made but one objection; and that only to a single word; at last, remitting the verbal sin to the restraints and necessities of rhyme, which often compel far better poets than myself to use an expression which, writing in prose, they would perhaps reject as not the best possible. The word alluded to is here in italics,

"The billows, closing o'er their trembling frames,
Are purpled by the gore, illumined by the flames."

The last line, being a striking and appropriate picture of the peculiar feature of that naval victory, in which our ungenerous foes used red-hot balls, was worth retaining by a slight sacrifice in the preceding rhyme, of a word which might have expressed bodies better than the word frames, as forms, perhaps, or limbs. I considered the couplet before I sent the poem to press.

My poetic carpenter comes to see me soon. I had the pleasure of assisting to enable him to raise a sum sufficient to acquire his admission into partnership with an opulent cotton-spinner. He tells me he never made more than 501. per,

ann. by his former business, and that his profits of the share in the mill were last year 150l. This Being has great merit, in never having suffered the day-dreams of his imagination to lure him from the path of manual industry. Genius is to indigence a dangerous present. I shall rejoice his honest, modest heart, by shewing him the high praise with which your last letter honours that poem of his that I inclosed.

Dr Johnson's absurd assertion must have often occurred to you, amidst the beautiful compositions which uneducated Poverty has produced in this age, viz. the impossibility which he alleges of people in low life writing any thing worth attention. He observes, that "the mind can only acquire ingenious ideas in the mart of intelligent conversation." His observations on this subject close with one of those dazzling metaphoric decisions, in which verbal strength and point are so continually mistaken for truth in that author, by those who are either not capable, or will not take the trouble of thinking for themselves. "No man," says he," can coin guineas but in proportion as he obtains gold." Newton, Yearsly, Burns, and, above all, the miraculous Chatterton, sufficiently refute the dogma. That its appearance in his writings was subsequent many years to the publi

city of Chatterton, causes the reflecting mind to recoil astonished from its effrontery.

We have in this neighbourhood an extraordinary character, Mr Vernon, Lady Berwick's brother; whom, in early life, the form of an Adonis, an ardour for licentious pleasures, and for increasing the means of obtaining them, made a fine man about town, a knowing man on the turf, and a deep staker at White's, till he was about thirty. Then, turning suddenly from these soul-less pursuits, he threw his energies into far different channels, and roamed, in a ten year's tour, with enthusiastic curiosity, not only "the Celtic and Iberian fields," but almost every scene upon the globe which has been dignified by martial prowess, or has obtained poetic celebrity. He has seen, in tolerable preservation, a great part of the Temple of Ceres at Thebes; has stood upon Mount Calvary, Olympus, and the Aonian Hills; and has drank of the now nearly exhausted waters of the Simois and Scamander; has fought, since England sheathed the sword, the Indians for America, and the Turks for the Empress. He was some time at Gibraltar with General Elliot, and obtained the friendship of that illustrious Being. Mr Vernon, calling upon me lately, shewed me a passage in one of the General's letters, to the following purport:

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