how sweet a sonnet has that loss given birth! The general fault to my taste of the sonnets in this collection, is, their want of the Miltonic breaks at various parts of the lines; which breaks appear to me a necessary characteristic in that species of measure, from having accustomed myself to consider the best of Milton's sonnets, as its proper model; yours to your infant Maria, has the break, or floating pause, and with that property, every other charm that can endear it to the heart and the imagination.

Your Lyrics, which open the second volume, are very fine. The Ode to Sleep, and the Mona are sublime; that to the river Coly, picturesque, interesting, and lovely. The Picture Gallery I like the least, because I least understand it.

My ever grateful devotion to the charming, though now much neglected muse of Shenstone, will not permit me to restrain expression of the regret and disgust I feel to see this pleasing miscellany disgraced by a feeble attempt to ridicule her natural and beautiful effusions. Shenstone appears to me the only professed pastoral poet, who has struck the true pastoral chords; who has that graceful simplicity, which the pastorals of Virgil and Pope want, without any of that coarseness into which, attempting to be more natural, by painting vulgar nature, Spenser, Gay,

and Phillips fell. Shenstone, actually living in the daily pursuit of rural cares, and in the habitual cultivation of scenic beauty, wrote as he felt. He places before us the landscapes by which he was surrounded; and all the coy graces of a refined imagination, and of a feeling heart, flow naturally in his verse. Ample, surely, is their power to elevate, and render interesting the benevolent employments of the country gentleman, blended with the pursuits of the scholar, and a taste for the fine arts; the dignity of friendship, and the animated, yet delicate solicitudes of growing passion. Something of excellence must surely be wanting in the head or heart of those who perceive not the delicious influence of these unobtrusive, these genuine beauties of sentiment and description, who forget that we owe the happiest imitation of Spenser's best manner to Shenstone. The schoolmistress is alone sufficient to entitle its author to an high seat in the poetic fame of Britain.

When you see Dr Downman, have the goodness to present my best compliments and thanks for the obliging letter with which he lately favoured me. My pen had conveyed its acknowledgements to himself, if the state of my health and spirits permitted the cultivation of any new correspondence, in addition to the too extended

one in which I have been long involved. I remain, with much esteem, Sir, your faithful, obliged, and obedient servant.

LETTER XLIII.

H. CARY, ESQ. of Christ Church.

May 29, 1792.

I THANK You for your letter, and should be sorry to pass it over in cold silence, though Heaven knows I am at present most unfit to enter the lists of criticism; for my heart is drooping with sorrow, and sickening with apprehension from the dangerous illness of a long-dear friend.

Your assertion, that Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton are the greatest poets of this country, may be controverted. Chaucer had certainly genius; but beneath the rust of his obsolete, coarse, and inharmonious diction, there is no ascertaining its degree. Milton is perhaps the third great poet the world has produced; however, we are not to forget, that, to use your own words, the sublimer province of poetry, imagination," Shakespeare holds the light so far above even

" in

him, that Chaucer and Spenser, thrown into Milton's scale, will hardly make up the difference. Such is the poetic glory of England. The remembrance of Shakespeare entirely does away your assertion, that "true poetic excellence has been more or less cultivated amongst us, according to the degree in which the Italian poets have been admired and studied.

"For he was ours unschool'd, and to us brought, More than all Europe, Greece, and Asia taught.”

The late great Warton has proved, that Milton studied, and borrowed as lavishly from his poetic predecessors in this country, as he did from the Greek, the Roman, and Italian bards. Brown, Drayton, and Fletcher were his models in Comus, L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso, greatly as he has improved upon them.

I should by no means have been sorry that you had studied and admired the Italian poets; but it is of your unjust, unpatriotic preference of them to the sublimer bards of your own country, that I am indignant. You plead the estimation in which they are held by Milton, Gray, Mason, Hayley, and Warton. It is said the latter knew Italian very imperfectly; and his works prove, that English poetry, from its first dim dawn to its present meridian splendour, was the chief ob

ject of his attention. I never heard of any such preference, as you have given, maintained by either of the other four, however they might take delight in exploring the poetic efflorescence of Italy. Indeed, I have heard Mr Hayley assert the superiority of the British bards, collectively, to those of any other country. Religiously do I believe, that the mass of genius, accumulated in this country since Spenser's time, is far greater than any other nation can boast Under this conviction, I am perfectly content to limit my delights in that charming science within the pale of my own exquisitely rich and harmonious language; the growing Latinity of which has already, indeed has long, rendered it sufficiently vowelled, sufficiently sweet, copious, and sonorous, to do every justice of sound to the sentiments, the allusions, the impersonizations of genius.

I confess I cannot perceive the high value of the simile you were so good to translate for me from Dante. It is undoubtedly a natural de

* Mr Cary says, “The bard Dante begins with this comparison, so exquisitely drawn from nature:- As the sheep come out of the fold, some alone, others in pairs, others three together, the rest stand fearful, putting their eyes and noses to the ground, and whatever the first does,' all the others do the same, crowding at her back. If she makes a stand, simple and tranquil, they, without knowing the reason, do the same.