Your work and name are rising, and will continue to rise in public estimation. Mrs. Turton observed that you had plenty of time before you, and only wanted one powerful helping hand to bring you into public notice. As it regards your second edition, the Dr. is decidedly of opinion that you should not have a large impression of the same quality as your present edition; rather have fifty or a hundred good copies quarto, and if you can engage an artist to engrave a frontispiece from some striking scene in your work, all the better. Such a work would be fit to appear on a nobleman's table, and he would not be ashamed of it. I have now finished all I intended to say on your work, and come to yourself. You complain of "your spirits being always in extremes." This proceeds from an excess of sensibility; or being too quickly acted on by the lightest impressions, and causes of the least importance ;a sort of sensitive plant, alive at every inlet of the senses, and feeling even a distant approach. You cannot eradicate; but you may, with the assistance of religion or Christian philosophy, resignation to the system of Divine Providence, relying on your interest in the Divine protection through the mediation of Christ, successfully combat the innate foe to your peace. And here let me beg of you not to bring into your aid, any of those temporary, fleeting, baneful auxiliaries that "steal away men's brains and senses." Their introduction and effects are so insidious, and the consequences so fatal, that I could not refrain from reminding you of our past conversations on that subject. Let me conclude, my dear sir, with praying that you may be blessed in every thing by that Great Being, to whose care I commend you. Such is the prayer of Your sincere friend, W. C. R DEAR FRANK, LETTER LXXX. Plymouth Dock. I AM just returned from my excursion through Cornwall; and I must say, that 1 am heartily sick of this tedious and unpleasant peregrination, and long once more to be at home. The heat has been so overpowering, that worn down with anxiety and the incessant toil of so much daily walking, I have sometimes lain down by the road side, faint and sick, and prayed to die that I might be released at once from all my misery and my cares. I have visited, no doubt for the last time, the old British towers of Launceston; and when at Bodmin, I recalled to mind poor ambitious Perkin, the tool of a violent party, who assumed the romantic appellation of "the White Rose of England," and here first took the style and title of Richard IV. of England. Short indeed was his career of royalty; nor could the sainted shrine De Bello Loco, or Beaulieu, protect him from the power of Henry. 1 At Truro I found a most hospitable, kind, and pleasant friend in the Rev. J. Collins. Truro abounds in poetasters, with the Rev. Mr. Polwhele at their head. One has written a poem on the churchyard; another some doggrel stuff on a London traveller; and a third, although no saint himself, a wretched farrago on the profligacy and licentiousness of the age. To this man, who I understood had some influence in Truro, and was said to be possessed of the most gentlemanly manners, taste, and talent, I was weak enough to send a polite and complimentary letter, with a copy of my poem. This copy and note, when I called a day or two after, were returned to me by this paragon of good breeding at the door by his servant, without deigning to allow me the superlative honour of approaching the sublime presence of his high mightiness. Prodigious!! I had the further honour of waiting on the Rev. Mr. Polwhele, and was admitted certainly to the privilege of an interview with him; but received with such stately coldness, as made me wish that I had never given myself the trouble; nor, though so many years an author himself, did he condescend to take a single copy of my work. I was introduced one day, during my stay in Truro, to a gentleman of that town by my name Shakspeare, and the Caractacus of Mason excel in dramatic excellence and poetic beauty, the Taha-o-chi-cou-Ell, the glory and boast of the Chinese stage. But let them pass. Time will discover who are the best judges of my ambitious Muse. How forcibly, my dear friend, does every part of this country recal to my memory. by-gone days and scenes. I recollect every thing, but no one recollects me. On my journey from Dartmouth to Kingsbridge, I passed again the very spot where last I parted with Mary. Do not laugh at my weakness. I knew it well; and I could not restrain a flood of tears that burst involuntarily from my eyes. How vivid, at that painful moment, were my recollections of the past. I saw her again before me, plain as the sunbeam, embodied in her beauty and her tears. I thought on her last words. I closed my eyes, but I saw her still. I fled the spot, but still her lovely form seemed to follow me. Forgive me :--I shall never behold that spot again! And was it here we parted? Was it here |