SECOND SONNET. "O! Shades of Hagley! where is now your boast? In scenes where pleasure rears her gilded throne, She chas'd, save those the gentlest, and the best, Of God, and nature, with the soft desires That wedded love augments, maternal love inspires." THIRD SONNET. "O'er the known vale I rove, with many a sigh, Beheld the summer sun go down the sky. Nor in the wood, nor by the fountain's side, Dim gleaming through yon thicket, the grey tower, Silent and solemn, which protects her urn; That pale memorial of those matchless charms, That gave an heaven of love to these now widow'd arms." I I know not if this experiment will answer. had not time to do it justice by polishing higher. It is an extempore experiment, and I grant that this measure, being of more difficult construction, is less calculated for an heart in the paroxysms of tender anguish, than the wilder Pindarics in which Lyttleton warbled. Tell me, however, with ingenuousness, if this alteration in the construction of the verse, has divested the ideas of their pathos. If you shall tell me that it has, I shall believe your prejudice against the sonnet at least unconquerable; and weary you no more with my labours for your poetical conversion. You object to Ossian from its often appearing to you bombastic. That bombast may be often found in the Ossianic volumes is certain.Macpherson doubtless extended the fragments he collected far beyond their original limits. I always conclude the bombast to be his own, the sublime to be Ossian.uls You desire a specimen of the celebrated George Hardinge's style of letter-writing. I insert, for that purpose, the copy of a very short one, which I received from him lately. You will, I think, confess that it is at once singular and brilliant, and that his flattery is not common-place,-ecce! "A charming letter from you, this instant received. Bless you for it. A letter once in two months, then, is to be my utmost hope. Well I embrace your two months with their 66 Sweet, reluctant, indolent delay.” No epithets in Milton, to be sure! Come, I must at last confess your contention in their favour triumphant, from the proofs you produce of their frequency on the pages of that verse demi-god. You write like an angel, and I would go to the end of the world for a lock of your hair; and so pray send me one at the two months' end-and let me carry off your picture by force from Romney. "It's rather impudent, after all, that you should be so eloquent, so able, yet so feminine, so touching. It is not fair;—you ought to be an elephant, and you are a charming woman, dear to me as any one of your enchanting sex, though I never saw you but once; exactly an hundred and nine years ago. Farewel, Urganda!" LETTER LVII. MRS COTTON. Lichfield, March 23, 1787. You misunderstood me if, in speaking of the refined, the learned and eloquent Mr 's union with a woman of such mere common-life talents, you thought I meant that happiness was confined to people of exalted intellect. So far from asserting that idea, I am inclined to believe those the happiest who mutually plod on in the narrow circle of every-day minds, and adopt prejudices for principles. No; I said, and I still think it ill for married happiness, where the abilities, acquirements, and pursuits are very unequal. Rochefoucault says, we cannot long love those by whom we are despised, or for whom we feel any degree of contempt. Something very like contempt must arise where the disparity is extreme, and the pursuits wholly dissimilar. My life has not been very short, or by any means unobservant. Many miseries have I witnessed consequent upon intellectual inequality, where people have a great deal of time for companionable purposes. Where they have not, it matters less. One happy couple only have I known, where there was the leisure without the powers for companionship. The late Mr and Mrs V. of this city. He was a man of wit and learning;-she the veriest intellectual blank imaginable;-but then Mr V. wished not so much to converse with people, as to be heard. He was not fastidious about the ability of his listeners. I have known him go on for hours, talking with infinite wit and humour, about himself, his connections, his wife's simplicity, and his childrens' good qualities and this without seeming at all to want or expect respondent animadversion. Mrs V. was beautiful, good humoured, and silent. The last was an all-atóning merit, which does not often belong to so narrow a mind. The noise of the shallow stream is proverbial. This couple were happy; but how rare is it that prety idiots are quiet and silent! The new bride is not likely to be either. I have this morning seen a very old acquaintance, unbeheld since my thirteenth year. I believe you know him: that shadow of a shade, Sir G. C. His figure is not an atom more formidable than in those my heedless and very youthful years, when, about seven years older than myself, the sight of him, and his tiny brother, dispersed my father's apprehensions about my accepting their |