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low, that epithets are the poet's colours, and that he can bring nothing to the eye, without a liberal use of them. When used merely to eke out the measure, without adding strength to the sense, or life to the image, they are superfluous and despicable; but not of that order are those of the Botanic Garden.

You bid me look at Shakespeare and Milton. I am familiar with their writings. When they mean to describe, they use as many epithets as Mason, or the author of the extracts I sent you, or as any other good poet of the present day; and of the compound epithet they are much more lavish. More frequently, also, than any modern, do they give us several epithets, in climatic succession, to a single substantive. Conversational poetry may be impressive, pathetic, and interesting, with a very sparing use of epithets; but descriptive poetry must abundantly have them, or it can, as was observed before, bring nothing to the eye of the reader. The Botanic Garden is a professedly descriptive composition. Lavish as are its epithets, many of them we find original, and all appropriate. Let us examine if Shakespeare and Milton are less lavish of them when imagery or scenery is their theme. First for the bard of Avon,

So are those crispy, snaky, golden locks, That make such wanton gambols in the wind."

"Thy turfy mountains where live nibbling sheep,
Thy flat meads, thick with clover for their food,
Thy banks with pioned and lillied brims,
Which spongy April, at thy hest bedecks,
To make cold nymphs chaste crowns."

"The seasons alter, hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the dumask rose,
And on old Hyem's lean and icy crown,
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set."

" By paved fountain, and by rushy brook,
Or on the beached margent of the sea."

"E'en till the eastern gate, all fiery red,
Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,
Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.”

"I warrant you

The white, cold, virgin snow upon my heart
Abates the ardour of my liver."

This even in common dramatic dialogue. And it is worth observation, that even the agitated state of Claudio's mind, at the time he makes the ensuing speech, does not prevent his using epithets lavishly. They are dictated by passion itself, if that passion wishes to give pathetic pictures of the evils it dreads.

"Ay! but to die,

To lie forgotten in the silent grave,
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod, and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
Or blown with restless violence about
The pendant world!"

"Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun,
Not separated with the racking clouds,

But sever'd in a pale clear-shining sky."

Shew me passages, if you can, in a modern poet, more liberal of epithets than the above verses selected from Shakespeare. Let us look at Milton.

"His ponderous shield,

Etherial temper, massy, large, and round
Behind him cast."-

Five epithets in one line and half.

"Now to th' ascent of that steep savage hill
Satan had journied on, pensive, and slow.”

"Yet not the more

Cease I to wander where the muses haunt
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill.”

"As when Heaven's fire

Has scath'd the forest oaks, or mountain pines,
With singed top their stately growth, tho' bare,
Stands on the blasted heath."

"Ye vallies low, that the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honied showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers."

But the day and night would fail me in citing instances on this subject. They swarm through the writings of Shakespeare and Milton. Take away the epithets from any of the passages, and see how indistinct the descriptions, images, and landscapes become!

You cannot dislike make-weight epithets more than I do. Had you called Pratt an epithetmonger, you had given him his proper title, who gives the following line in seven times repetition through the course of five pages:

"O weak, O frail, O poor mortality."

You tell me that you dislike in my poem, Louisa, the first adjective of the ensuing couplet,

"Lighted with arrowy beams the ocean caves,
And sunk with splendour in th' illumin'd waves."

It has always been my endeavour to paint from nature, rather than to copy from books, in my poetic landscapes; and I have often observed,

that, when caves are penetrated with light, it is shot into them in pointed rays, for which arrowy is a picturesque epithet. I confess it is of my own coinage; but I flatter myself it was not coined unhappily. Its original appearance in English verse will, I believe, be found in my Elegy on Captain Cook, published first in the year 1780*. It has met with very flattering adoption in the subsequent works of superior poets.

I cannot conclude my letter without adding one more observation respecting the reason you allege for your strange scorn of the extracts from the Botanic Garden. If you will not grant that I have demonstrated your mistake about Shakespeare and Milton being more sparing of the adjective than the best modern poets, I beg we may speak no more to each other on classical subjects, since we shall certainly agree no better on poetic claims, rights, usages, &c. than Archbishop Laud and Hampden would on political ones, were they to talk them over in Elysium. It hectics me painfully to see an understanding of high endowment thus unjust to contemporary abilities-to find the "mole's dim curtain," where I expected to have met the "lynx's beam." Adieu.

* This word is not new, but may be found in Milton and Gray.

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