And, lest it should be apprehended that my poetic reputation might give some degree of consequence to my request, Mr Hayley, who is the Duke's near neighbour, has told me that his Grace had no fondness for works of imagination. The race of Mæcenas is extinct in this period.

When my dear father was in his better days, he lived on terms of intercourse and intimacy with the Marquis of Stafford. Lord Sandwich and my father, in their mutual youth, had been on the Continent together, with the affection of brothers. On my publishing the Monody on André, he desired me to present one to each of these Lords, expressing an assured belief that the work of an old friend's daughter would not be unacceptable.

I, who ever thought that men of rank have seldom any taste for intellectual exertion, which serves not some purpose of their own interest; and feeling an invincible repugnance to paying attentions, which are likely to be repulsed with rude neglect, strongly, warmly, and even with a few proud tears, expostulated against the intrusion. "My father never knew that great world, with which, in his youth, he had much intercourse. Frank, unsuspecting, inattentive to those nice shades of manners, those effects, resulting from trivial circumstances, which develop the human heart, he judged of others by his own ingenuous

disposition. Benevolent, infinitely good-natured, and incapable of treating his inferiors with neglect, he thought every kindness, every civility he received, sincere,-every slight shewn either to himself, or others, accidental. .

Thus he would persist in the idea that these Lords would be gratified by such a mark of attention to them; and that I should receive their thanks.-I, who had been so much less in their society, knew them better; that such little great men are as capable of impoliteness as they are incapable of taste for the arts;-but my obedience was insisted upon.

One condition however I made, that, if they should not have the good manners to write, "I thank you, Madam, for your poem," he would never more request me to obtrude my compositions upon titled insolence. They had not the civility to make the least acknowledgement.

My heart (I own it is in some respects a proud one) swelled with indignation;—not at the neglect, for I felt it beneath my attention, and had expected it, but because I had been obliged to give them reason to believe that I desired their notice.

My life against sixpence, the Duke of Richmond would receive a letter from me in the same manner. Ah! a soul like Lord Heathfield's, attentive to intellectual exertions in the closet of

the studious, as in the field of honour, and generous enough to encourage, and throw around it the lustre of his notice, is even more rare than his valour, and military skill. I wish his Lordship to see this letter. It will explain to him the nature of those convictions, and of those feelings, which must be powerful indeed, ere I could hesitate a moment to follow his advice, though but insinuated on any subject. My devoted respects and good wishes are his, as they are your's, not periodically, but constantly.

LETTER LXXXIV.

MISS WESTON.

Lichfield, Dec. 12, 1787.

It is pleasant, dear Sophia, to hear what odd things people assert to support their opinions. It seems a strange sort of compliment to say, that pages, covered over with disclosures of the heart, on various subjects, and addressed to absent friends, are not, what they were intended to be, letters, but something, Heaven knows what is to be their name, of a totally different kind.

I am at present re-reading, with Giovanni, the by me often read scriptures of your idolatry, our great lyrist, Gray's Epistles; and find, as I was wont, much to admire in them;—yet those addressed to Mr West, before either of them were twenty, while they are full, even to affectation, of splenetic wit, terseness, point, and classical allusion, have no glow, either of the heart or the imagination ;—and at a period of life when nothing can recompence their absence. André's letters, published with my Monody on him, have, to me, much more fascinating beauty. Their easy, playful, happy flow of humour, mixed with those fine emanations of lively affection, are infinitely more engaging in youth than that satiric vein which runs through Gray's, and than that comfortless vapourishness, of which they complain. In André's also we find tender enthusiasm, and all those juvenile graces, of which the other are destitute.

There is the same fault in the highly ingenious letters of his riper years—but it sits better on the man than on the boy. They are patterns of wit; but wit is too constantly the master-tint; and therefore is it that the style has not that variety necessary to the perfection of confidential letters. The first models of perfection in the epistolary style are the letters of Clarissa, Miss Howe,

Lovelace, and Belford, in the immortal volumes of Richardson.

With such able assistance as Mr Potter's, there is not much wonder that P. produces poems which contain some good passages. Mr Potter, I am told, lives wholly in retirement. A man of talents, upon whom the world's neglect has borne hard. Adieu !

LETTER LXXXV.

REV. T. S. WHALLEY.

Lichfield, Dec. 20, 1787.

ALAS! my friend, that ever pain and sickness should impede the exertions of so warm, so clear a spirit!-But the sullen fiends were retreating when you wrote; that was a great comfort; and Mrs Piozzi and Miss Williams speak in a style to confirm my hopes.

The fair Helen Williams is delighted with the visit you paid her at Southampton. It has filled her imagination with your talents, and with the wonders of Mont Blanc. When will your poem B b

VOL. I.