are always judged of by their worst performance, and deceased ones, and especially the long deceased ones, by their best.' She laments that we have no nationality respecting poetic productions; that the taste for prose-compositions predominates; and that our bards of the present day, in spite of their originality and sparks of true genius, cannot tower to that fame and patronage to which they are intitled. Writing to her friend, Court Dewes, Esq., in a letter dated Lichfield, April 9, 1788, she thus displays the literary honours of the present times:

In

And now, ere I say adieu, I must fight you a little more upon the old ground. I feel a zeal, something like that of patriotism, for the honour of my own times, since I also feel assured, that their claim to poetic splendour transcends that of any former period. What you say, however, is perfectly just about the lack of poetic patronage. In that respect, but in that only, is our age less Augustan than that of Anne. But impartial comparison can demonstrate, that all sort of fine writing is in much greater abundance. Perhaps that very abundance forms the chief reason why genius is so much less distinguished than it was in those days. Its radiant lights, running into confluence, are not so conspicuous as when they were fewer in number. The times of Swift and Pope had no lyric poet. Ours have four very resplendent ones, Collins, Gray, Mason, and Warton. One of these four, considering the superiority of his subjects to those of Pindar, and the at least equality of his imagery and numbers, may fairly be styled the greatest lyrist the world has produced. Shenstone excelled all his rivals in the pastoral walk. professed satire, we have a Juvenal and an Horace in Churchill and Johnson; since, though the former was Johnson's model, the polished elegance of his verse is Horatian; while a new species of satire, in the heroic epistles of Mason, has perhaps hit the true tone of satire better than any of them. In blank-verse, Cowper disputes the palm with Thomson in his descriptions; with Young, in the nervous rage of moral philippics. Surely Mr. Hayley's verse breathes a more creative and original genius, than even the brilliant Pope, who excels him in nothing but in the high and laboured polish of his enchanting numbers; while Mr. H.'s prose has the ease and wit of Addison, with much more strength and spirit. Amidst all Johnson's faults, the greatness of his abilities has amazed and dazzled the whole literary world. Then, what a nine of original wit are the writings of Sterne? How brilliant in that property the comedies of Hayley and Sheridan! To the names of all these eminent men, that have adorned the last half century, we may add those of Akenside, Lyttleton, Beattie, Langhorne, Dr. Warton, Holme, Jephson, Jerningham, Owen Cambridge, Whalley, and our new star, Mr. Crowe, to say nothing of our many Sapphos to the single one of Pope's time. Surely, surely you are prejudiced against our day a little, after the manner in which Lord Shaftesbury was prejudiced against his, who asserts, in the Characteristi, that the period which you call transcendent, was wholly barren of genius and wit.'

Though

Though Miss Seward is among the number of those persons who think that the style of Addison has been praised beyond its merit, and though she approves of the growing Latinity' that Johnson introduced, yet, with a partiality truly English, she is contented to confine her pleasures to the perusal of the productions of her native soil:

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.'

Of the various kinds of poetic composition, Miss S. manifests great partiality for the sonnet; and she considers the A letter to the floating pause as one of its chief beauties. Rev. R. Polwhele, dated May 25, 1792, has this passage in

reference to the sonnet:

It concerns me to find that you have been so unfortunate in the loss of your infants; yet, to 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.'

Her correspondent, Mr. Hardinge, delights her with his admiration of Milton's sonnets, and particularly of the pastoral monody, Lycidas:

I am glad to hear that Milton's sonnet to Laurence is peculiarly dear to you, who are so warm and just an admirer of many of its. brethren. I could never read it without a pleasure that thrilled through my brain. O! such winter days, and such winter evenings, how they spangle over existence like a few bright stars in a gloomy horizon. This is certainly the most touching of Milton's sonnets; but that to the soldier to spare his dwelling-place is the most sublime. How we love to see the great man asserting the claims of his own genius with manly firmness, and declaring its inevitable claim to confer lasting celebrity!

I am charmed to find you amongst the adorers of Milton's Lycidas. That is a test-composition; and to read it without pleasureto have read it without frequent recurrence, argues a morbid deficiency in the judgment and in the affections. I know that it is reprobated by Johnson; but false criticism, on the pale horse of that des

Q 2

pot,

pot, is the pest of the present times, trampling beneath its " armed hoofs" the richest and rarest flowers of genius.

It does not appear, however, that the nephew of the great Lord Camden and the clergyman's daughter at Lichfield grew enamoured of each other, as the interchange of opinions became frequent. The lady saw, or thought that she saw, that the fine gentleman looked down on her as on a being of subordinate rank; and, with feelings of very commendable pride, she resents this indignity, in her turn treating with contempt his fastidiousness in the line of verbal criticism:

ease.

• You have a verbal queasiness about you, which amounts to disI hope you like that elegant word. Upon uncontrovertible authority have I set a little dozen words upon their joint stools in the poetic fane, which you have attempted to kick down stairs; but I trust they will maintain their station.

From the extracts I sent you, you have, by this time, received proof, that I did not call Addison's serious prose a water-gruel style, without having found it so, at last in some instances. Nothing wearies me like prosing about and about the good cardinal virtues in their old robes; but I like to see them glittering in the bright armour of Johnsonian eloquence.

Addison always appeared to me as tautological in his solemn prose as in his verse, when he says,

"So the pure limpid stream, when foul'd by stains

Of rushing torrents, and descending rains,

Works itself clear, and as it runs refines."

There can be no partiality in my boundless preference of Johnson's style, as a moral essayist, to Addison's. I am ready to confess the superiority of the latter in playful composition. Addison died before I was born, and Johnson hated me; against whose writings am I most likely to be prejudiced? But, in truth, I never suffer either personal affection, or dislike, to operate upon what I read. So if, as you insinuate respecting these two celebrated authors, I am blind to excellence, and feel myself fired with rapturous approbation where no excellence is, the defect lies in my taste, and in my judgment.

Your wit runs strangely away with you in criticizing poetry, or surely you would feel the happiness of Mr. Hayley's simile for the fine luxuriances of genius, lopt away by criticism, when he compares them to Samson shorn by Dalilah, of his strength-giving tresses. Similies are not expected to be minutely exact; it is enough, if the general resemblance is striking.

That author did not mean that time had made the frolic com positions of Chaucer heavy as lead- he uses not the word, but says "dark as lead." Time, rendering their language obsolete, may well be allowed to have made that metal dim or dark as lead, that once was brilliant as steel and gold.

And what!-is Hayley's illustration of the bounds which prejudice affixes to genius, by an allusion to the pillars of Hercules,

supposed

supposed, by the ancients, to fix the limits of the world; is that too sublime for your comprehension? You! the classical, the learned ! "And who's blind now, Mamma, the urchin cried."

I could dissect many of Milton's sublimest passages, place their imagery and phrases in a ridiculous point of view, with the same ease that prejudice against the moderns induces you to ridicule fine passages in Mason and Hayley, and that envy induced Johnson so to criticise the beauties of Milton, Prior, Gray, &c. &c. Behold a mirror to such critical sophistries.

"Soon as they forth were come to open sight

Of day-spring, and the Sun, who scarce uprisen,
With wheels yet hovering o'er the ocean brim,
Shot parallel to th' earth his dewy ray."

Paradise Lost, Book 5.

When we place the sun in a chariot, we may mention its wheels; but personifying the sun as the word his implies, and arising from slumber, we must not give him wheels instead of legs.

"And the thunder,

Wing'd with red lightning, and impetuous rage,
Perhaps has spent its shafts, and ceases now

To bellow through the vast and boundless deep."

• Natural history is here violated; the properties of lightning are transferred to the mere noise made by its explosion. Thunder is in itself innoxious; and, after all, this dread instrument of Jehovah's wrath is turned into a bull, and bellows.

But O! while I thus transform myself into one of those unfeeling critics, of whom my spirit is so impatient, how sincerely do I abjure such sickly accuracy; like that by which you were jaundiced in your strictures on the beauteous extracts I sent you from Mason and Hayley. A nervous and manly understanding ought to shake such verbal prudery to air, as "the lion shakes the dew-drop from his mane.” '

On the subject of Epithets employed in poetry, Miss S. is at issue with Mr. Hardinge, who roughly calls the lady an epithet-monger. In letter lxxii. p. 333. she says, The feeble makeweight epithet I dislike as much as you can do-but the plenteous use of judicious picturesque epithets is vital poetry.' This remark she amply illustrates; triumphantly observing,

It would be a fine opiate truly to read a descriptive poem, in which the author should talk of hills, and vallies, and rocks, and seas, and streams, and youths, and nymphs, without giving us the picturesque noun-adjective, which alone conveys to us any distinct idea, what sort of hill and valley, rock, ocean, stream, youth, or maid, he means to place before us.'

To the literary sparring which Miss S.'s correspondence with Mr. Hardinge displays, is added something of a less playful kind; and her mortification is very apparent:

You seem to think my writings infected by the affectation of using uncommon words. I hope not; but I choose, and always shall choose the strongest which spontaneously occur, to express my idea, whether in prose or verse, if the idea is elevated; mindless whether they do, or do not form a part of the fashionable vocabulary of Lord Fillagree and Lady Pamtickle. When I converse in such circles I stoop my style to their level, but I write for other kind of persons.'—

I know you do me honour in giving yourself the trouble to reform what strikes you as defective in my own writings, and as erroneous judgment on the composition of others; but, differing so materially about the component parts of a receipt for making beautiful style, I am not likely to improve by your corrections. You are in high life, I am in obscurity, from which I do not wish to emerge, since peace is dearer to me than distinction. Our acquaintance is not in common, therefore anecdote can seldom be interesting. Why therefore should we pursue our correspondence? I shall be happier in giving my epistolary leisure to friends whose more congenial tastes ensure a warm welcome to all my communications, than to you, who are so often disgusted with my style both in prose and verse, especially since I cannot wish to slacken its nerves, because it is naturally energetic; and to become light, it must be light by affectation.

Suffer me, then, to bid you a long adieu, with a grateful sense of your desire to have instructed, and of the great amusement your wit afforded me, ere my relish of frolic humour was lost in the gloom of a Parent's death-bed,'

The correspondence, however, with Mr. Hardinge, was not here broken off, and his fastidiousness is the subject of renewed complaint in subsequent letters: but, if Mr.H.was a too fastidious critic on poetry, and took up antipathies to certain words without any good reason, Miss S., on the other hand, contended for carrying the licentia poetica too far. Her opinion respecting rhymes will not be sanctioned by men of sound judgment. Bad rhymes (she says) occasionally mingling with good ones relieve the ear, as in music it is relieved by the intermixture of discords.' (Vol. ii. p. 221.) The two cases are not similar. On this point, however, we shall not enlarge, but shall change the scene to afford some relief to our readers.

Miss Seward's politics make as distinguishing a figure in these volumes as her poetry; and her sentiments are strongly and repeatedly expressed. At first, Mr. Pitt is the political saviour of his country, "a second Daniel;" and Mr. Erskine, who opposed the minister's war-system, is represented as dealing in Belial-eloquence' but she soon changes her tone, loses all confidence in Mr. Pitt's wisdom and integrity, pronounces his measures tricking expedients,' embraces Mr. Fox as the people's friend, and bestows the highest compliments

on