Caroline de Lichfield is the only new publication in which I have felt interested-a novel-but exquisite in its kind, though the English translation equals not the original in French. It is, however, sufficiently enchanting from the pen of Holcroft. You must not suppose that I make a practice of reading novels. I open none that have not been highly recommended to me by those whom I believe judges of fine writing. Caroline made my imagination, and my heart, its instant captives. Simplicity, wit, and pathos, and the most exalted generosity, are to be found in the characters, plan, conduct, and sentiments of this fascinating story. Disavowing a propensity to read, and to love novels, yet have I always considered the Clarissa and Grandison of Richardson, as the highest efforts of genius in our language, next to Shakespeare's plays. I live in constant familiarity with their graces. Devoted to them in my earliest youth, they set my taste too high ever after to endure mediocrity in that line of writing. Fielding's romances are also excellent, though I abjure the coarse unfeeling taste of those who prefer them to the glories of the Richardsonian pen. Yesterday I had the pleasure of conversing with a valued friend, whose late dangerous illness forbade me to hope that we should ever more self, is not without beauty, though I have some objections to it besides its illegitimacy. The idea is good of the contention between the genius of mechanism and the muse:-but it is not in the nature of those passions from which contending ladies, however incorporeal their substance, ought not to be supposed exempt, that the former should deck the crown of her rival with the symbol of her own arts. Besides it paints ill; figured ivory planes and golden compasses upon a laurel wreath, form a strange contrast. Fairy is an illjudged epithet for the muse, when her train are termed syren. It makes a jumble of mythological allusion astonishing in a learned and classical writer. The fourth line is one of mine, without any quotation-mark. He took it from an ode which he copied from my manuscript-book some years ago. The five last verses of this sonnet are beautiful. You must get above idle scruples about shewing, or sending to your friends verses written in your own praise. The bard, like the warrior, is privileged to display the trophies he has won : And swell the luckless, disregarded train, Wreck'd on her flowery, but her faithless shore; Be mine thy aims to prosper, and to shine, And Archimedes' fame, but not his fate, be thine!” Caroline de Lichfield is the only new publication in which I have felt interested-a novel-but exquisite in its kind, though the English translation equals not the original in French. It is, however, sufficiently enchanting from the pen of Holcroft. You must not suppose that I make a practice of reading novels. I open none that have not been highly recommended to me by those whom I believe judges of fine writing. Caroline made my imagination, and my heart, its instant captives. Simplicity, wit, and pathos, and the most exalted generosity, are to be found in the characters, plan, conduct, and sentiments of this fascinating story. Disavowing a propensity to read, and to love novels, yet have I always considered the Clarissa and Grandison of Richardson, as the highest efforts of genius in our language, next to Shakespeare's plays. I live in constant familiarity with their graces. Devoted to them in my earliest youth, they set my taste too high ever after to endure mediocrity in that line of writing. Fielding's romances are also excellent, though I abjure the coarse unfeeling taste of those who prefer them to the glories of the Richardsonian pen. Yesterday I had the pleasure of conversing with a valued friend, whose late dangerous illness forbade me to hope that we should ever more converse together. When those we esteem have emerged from the valley and shadow of death, we meet them with redoubled satisfaction "In the warm precincts of the cheerful day," May you, dear Edwin, never find them wintered by the bleak gusts of disease or sorrow! LETTER LXIV. MISS SCOTT, Lichfield, May 27, 1787 MUTUALLY prevented from writing to each other often, I yet hope this inevitable seldomness. of intercourse will not chill our friendship. Mr Taylor's visit gave me pleasure. He has read, and thought deeply. Few of our clergy prove such able champions for the great cause in which they are enlisted. My poor father grows more infirm than ever; but his temper is become so tranquil, and satis * A dissenting minister to whom Miss Scott was engaged, and whom she afterwards married.-S. fied with all we do for him; and his decay is so exempt from pain, that I feel an exquisite pleasure in administering to his comforts. You know, by experience, how sweet the filial affections find it, "To rock the cradle of reposing age." You request my opinion of Cowper. He appears to me at once a fascinating, and great poet; as a descriptive one hardly excelled. Novel and original, even in landscape-painting, whose stores the luxuriant and exquisite Thomson seemed to have exhausted; but true poetic genius, looking at the objects of nature with its own eyes, rather than through the medium of remembered description from the pen of others, will ever find her exhaustless. There are passages in the Task to which I often recur, and always with unsated delight-viz. the address to Omai, wandering, after his return from England to Otaheite, on his native shores and hills: "As duly, every morn, He climbs, with anxious step, the mountain's brow Seen in the dim horizon, turns him pale |