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expect to find no Potosi in Parnassus. For wealth I am not in the least ambitious; but let the Muse speak for me in a case where she is herself so warmly interested.

Blest Patron of that fair enchanting art

Which e'en from infancy has fixed my soul,
Say, would'st thou urge my unpolluted heart
To spurn for Interest's lures her dear control?
Ah no; for though the partial hand of Fate
Has to my lot assigned a moderate dole,
Yet in my views, proportioned to my state,
No airy dreams of wealth or grandeur roll.
Content to scorn the splendour of the great,
To leisure and the Muse I vow my days;
Happy if on my name hereafter wait
This little tribute of unblemished praise,

That all the talents I received from Heaven
Were still to virtue and my country given.

I am glad to find a man of such superior abilities as Mr. Weston, conspiring with me in giving the palm for harmony of versification to Dryden, though we impute it to different causes; he to the frequent recurrence of his triplets and alexandrines, I to the happy disposition and choice of his words.

Did you ever read anything more melodious than

this?

Behold, yon bordering fence of sallow trees

Is fraught with flowers, the flowers are fraught with bees ;
The busy bees with a soft murmuring strain

Invite to gentle sleep the labouring swain ;

While from the neighbouring rock, with rural songs
The pruner's voice the pleasing dream prolongs ;
Stock-doves and turtles tell their amorous pain,

And from the lofty elms of love complain.

It is curious to compare what Weston says of Pope with what Hayley says of him in the last note to the third Book of his Epic Poetry. To take the mean between both extremes is the wisest method.

For when the latter affirms Pope was entirely led to satirical writing in the more advanced part of his life from his love for Virtue, and his warmth for her cause, he is refuted by this argument; that, that elegant Poet, in the earliest effusions of his pen, discovers a tendency to satire; and what the former would have us believe is so remote from even the shadow of truth, that we can scarcely hear him with patience.

Ever yours,

dearest Madam,

H. F. CARY.

TO MISS SEWARD.

Birmingham, March 5, 1789.

OCCUPIED, my honoured and dear Muse, as you constantly are by numberless avocations, it is not without the greatest degree of diffidence, or rather of presumption, that such an insignificant fellow as myself can put in a claim to the smallest portion of time, which, precious as it is, is already so unmercifully plundered. But your last letter, which now lies before me, assigns as the benevolent reason for your not suffering my intruders to remain unacknowledged, that you could not endure to give me pain.

On the same plea admit the scrawls with which I so often trouble you without repining.

Short as the time is which I have spent in the society of mankind, yet it has been long enough to make me (with a very few exceptions) take the greatest disgust to it. This has caused me to cling more closely to those few: and the delightful thought that when I was writing to you, I was conversing with one whom I deservedly esteemed and loved has cheered many a pensive, I will not say unhappy, hour of solitude, and compensated for many a still more irksome hour wasted in frivolous and unmeaning company.

Yet, though your correspondence is thus dear to me, I hope never to encroach upon your kindness by exercising it too often. Your strictures on Spence's criticism of the Odyssey gave me great pleasure. In general I accorded with you, but on some poetic topics we are fated to disagree. Such is that with regard to the diffuseness or fidelity of a translator. The first object of translation is to give you the clearest and most intimate acquaintance with the original. For this reason the strictest version may justly be called the best. Not but that I allow to paraphrases a large portion of merit; they may be even more finely executed than their copy, but a plainer if more true imitation is to be preferred. Sir John Denham's allusion is an ingenious piece of sophistry.

There are not many expressions in the dead lan

guages which may not in ours be rendered almost literally, and in an adequate manner. To effect this, indeed, demands the nicest skill and the happiest precision. My assertions will, I trust, soon be reduced to example by the immortal author of "The Task." If he answers my expectations, and you still continue to prefer Pope, you must be content to prefer him to Homer.

In Mr. Weston's late publication, I like that translation in Dryden's style much better than the other. Not only because it is really a much more beautiful poem than the Latin, but because the blank verse is not happily faithful. I cannot help thinking he kept it below the other on purpose; and so I made free to tell him in a letter I wrote to him the other day on his work.

Mr. Urban's reviewer has again displayed his egregious ignorance and bad taste in his critique on it. Is it not a pity that the pages of "Nichols's Miscellany" should be disgraced by such a blockhead? Your word, my dear madam, would have great influence with the editor; and, if he is not blind, he will discard him. I send you a sonnet addressed to Doctor Darwin, on his "Botanical Garden," which I long to finish.

Believe me,

Your very affectionate friend and servant,

H. F. CARY.

Say, favour'd Bard, to whom her costly store
Flora has given to scan with raptured sight
Her pearly buds of mantle silver hoar,

Her gems that flame in golden radiance bright,
Each straggling sweet that on the mountain's height
Drinks the pure effluence of the orient beam;
Or in the valley's deep umbrageous night
Pensively meek, bends o'er the glassy stream :
Ah, why thereon thy wild romantic dream
Fancy indulgent sheds her choicest dews ?
Why does thy groundless fear the novel theme
To the fixed ear of public taste refuse,

That to remotest years shall crown thy name

With the bless'd guerdon of a deathless fame ?

The court he paid to the Muses, however, did not interfere with the more important duties of life; he was still diligent in his attention to classical studies, to which he added the acquisition of the French and Italian languages, the latter under the tuition of Signor Vergani, an Italian master at Birmingham, as I learn from a letter of Vergani's, of this date. How sincere and ardent was his love of literature may be seen from the following letter addressed—

TO HIS SISTER GEORGINA.

DEAR SISTER,

March 17, 1789.

You are right in your conjectures: I am deeply, though very delightfully, engaged in my studies; and it is not without some degree of inconvenience that I take off my attention from these for a moment to write to you. I send your amiable

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