second stanza, which gives the unicorns at the gate, and the portraits, "with holly aboon their brie.' To give them, no great reach of fancy was requisite; but still they are pictured, and, as such, poetry. Lord Maxwell's Good Night is but a sort of inventory in rhyme of his property, interspersed with some portion of tenderness for his wife, and some expressions of regard for his friends; but the first has no picture, and the latter little pathos. That ballad induced me, by what appeared its deficiencies, to attempt a somewhat more poetic leave-taking of house, land, and live-stock. My ballad does not attempt the pathetic, and you will smile at my glossary Scotch. Mr. Erskine's supplemental stanzas to the poem, asserted to have been written by Collins, on the Highland superstitions, have great merit, and no inferiority to those whose manner they assume. In the border ballads, the first strong rays from the Delphic orb illuminate Jellom Grame, in the 4th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 20th stanzas. There is a good corpse-picture in Clerk Saunders, the rude original, as you observe, of a ballad in Percy, which I have thought furnished Burger with the hint for his Leonore. How little delicate touches have improved this verse in Percy's imitation! "O! if I come within thy bower I am no mortal man! Thy days will not be long." And now, in these border ballads, the dawn of poesy, which broke over Jellom Grame, strengthens on its progress. Lord Thomas and fair Annie has more beauty than Percy's ballad of that title. It seems injudiciously altered from this in your collection; but the Binnorie, of endless repetition, has nothing truly pathetic; and the ludicrous use made of the drowned sister's body, by the harper making a harp of it, to which he sung her dirge in her father's hall, is contemptible. Your dissertation preceding Tam Lane, in the second volume, is a little mine of mythologic information and ingenious conjecture, however melancholy the proofs it gives of dark and cruel superstition. Always partial to the fairies, I am charmed to learn that Shakspeare civilized the elfins, and, so doing, endeared their memory on English ground. It is curious to find the Grecian Orpheus metamorposed into a king of Winchelsea. The Terrible Graces look through a couple of stanzas in the first part of Thomas the Rhymer, "O they rade on," &c.; also, "It was mirk, mirk, night;" and potent are the poetic charms of the second part of this oracular ballad, which you confess to have been modernized; yet more potent is the third. Both of them exhibit tender touches of sentiment, vivid pictures, landscapes from nature, not from books, and all of them worthy the author of Glenfinlas. "O tell me how to woo thee," is a pretty ballad of those times, in which it was the fashion for lovers to worship their mistresses, and when ballads, as you beautifully observe, reflected the setting rays of chivalry. Mr. Leyden's Cout Keelder pleases me much. The first is a sublime stanza, and sweet are the landscape-touches in the third, tenth, and eleventh, and striking the winter simile in the ninth. The picture of the fern is new in poetry, and to the eye, thus, "The next blast that young Keelder blew, Yet the sleek fern, with fingery leaves, The "wee demon" is admirably imagined. And now the poetic day, which had gradually risen into beauty and strength through this second volume, sets nobly amidst the sombre yet oftenilluminated grandeur of Glenfinlas. Permit me to add one observation to this already long epistle. The battle of Flodden field, so disas trous to Scotland, has been, by two poetic females, beautifully mourned; but your boasted James the Fourth deserved his fate, from the ungenerous advantage he sought to take of Henry the Eighth, by breaking the peace, without provocation, when that monarch was engaged in war with France. So deserve all the rulers of nations, who, unstimu lated by recent injuries, thus unclasp "the purple testament of bleeding war." Perhaps this voluminous intrusion on your time will be thought merciless; but it seemed to me that barren thanks, and indiscriminate praise, was an unworthy acknowledgment of the honour conferred upon me by the gift of these highly curious and ingenious books. A bright luminary in this neighbourhood recently shot from its sphere, with awful and deplored suddenness.-Dr. Darwin, on whose philosophical talents and dissertations, so ingeniously conjectural, the adepts in that science looked with admiring, if not always acquiescent respect; in whose creative, gay, luxuriant, and polished imagi nation, and harmonious numbers, the votaries of poetry basked delighted; and on whose discernment into the causes of disease, and skill in curing them, his own and the neighbouring counties reposed. He was born to confute, by his example, a frequent assertion, that the poetic fancy loses its fine efflorescence after middle life. The Botanic Garden, one of the most highly imaginative poems in our language, was begun after its author had passed his forty-sixth year. I have the honour to remain, sir, &c. ANNA SEWARD. The Hon. Horace Walpole to the Hon. H. S. Conway. Strawberry Hill, May 1, 1763. I FEEL happy at hearing your happiness; but, my dear Harry, your vision is much indebted to your long absence, which Makes bleak rocks and barren mountains smile. I mean no offence to Park Place; but the bitterness of the weather makes me wonder how you can find the country tolerable now. This is a Mayday for the latitude of Siberia! The milkmaids should be wrapped in the motherly comforts of a swan-skin petticoat. In short, such hard words have passed between me and the north wind today, that, according to the language of the times, I was very near abusing it for coming from Scotland, and to imputing it to Lord Bute. I don't know whether I should not have written a North Briton against it, if the printers were not all sent to Newgate, and Mr. Wilkes to the Tower-ay, to the Tower, tout de bon. The new ministry are trying to make up for their ridiculous insignificance by a coup d'eclat. As I came hither yesterday, I do not know whether the particulars I have heard are genuine; but in the Tower he certainly is, taken up by Lord Halifax's warrant for treason: vide the North Briton of Saturday was se'nnight. It is said he refused to obey the warrant, of which he asked and got a copy from the two messengers, telling them he did not mean to make his escape, but sending to demand his habeas corpus, which was refused. He then went to Lord Halifax, and thence to the Tower; declaring they should get nothing out of him but what they knew. All his papers have been seized. Lord chief justice Pratt, I am told, finds great fault with the wording of the warrant. I don't know how to execute your commission for books of architecture, nor care to put you to expense, which I know will not answer. I have been consulting my neighbour, young Mr. Thomas Pitt, my present architect: we have all books of that sort here, but cannot think of one which will help you to a cottage or a greenhouse. For the former, you should send me your idea, your dimensions; for the latter, don't you rebuild your old one, though in another place? A pretty greenhouse I never saw; nor, without immoderate expense, can it well be an agreeable object. Mr. Pitt thinks a mere portico without a pediment, and windows removable in summer, would be the best plan you could have. If so, don't you remember something of that kind, which you liked, at Sir Charles Cotterel's at Rousham? But a fine greenhouse must be on a more exalted plan. In short, you must be more particular, before I can be at all so. I called at Hammersmith yesterday about lady Ailesbury's tubs; one of them is nearly finished, but they will not both be completed these ten days. Shall they be sent to you by water? Good-night to her ladyship and you, and the infanta, whose progress in waxen statuary I hope advances so fast, that by next winter she may rival Rackstrow's old man. Do you know, that, though apprized of what |