As to a miscellany of mine, there is certainly sufficient materials in my desk to fill several volumes, without marginal lakes spread out between the passages; but they must be arranged, corrected, and transcribed, ere they can approach the press; and I almost despair of ever finding leisure for the task. How dear Mr Hayley, with those burning eyes of his, which, "though clear, to outward sight, of blemish or of spot," annoy him so much by the sense of internal inflammation, how he gets through those numerous beautiful productions which he presents to the public, I cannot imagine; but, indeed, he lives in hermitic retirement, and I in the mill-horse round of a provincial city's diurnal society.

I meant to have spoken to you farther of the spirited graces of Cowper's Task; but in a letter, already voluminous, I must not give my ideas their full license on the subject. The sublime, though gloomy, fires of Young, with the corrosive ones of Churchill, stream blended through its later pages. The author seems almost as religious as the former, and quite as ill-natured as the latter. Shield me from saints who look on the world as a den of fools and knaves!

upI

repine when such possess a muse of fire, with whom dwell the creative powers of imagery, the soft bright hues of description, and the melting influence of pathos. The beautiful apostrophe to Omaia, together with many other parts of this poem, breathes of all these inspirations.

What an interesting object is your Mary Lloyd in her rural habiliments, with all her serene emanations streaming around her!

And O! what a truly comic scene is formed by your description of Mrs in her fine coach, and yourself standing upon your own steps, and hammering out excuses for not having returned her visits! That ever wit and humour should have enabled you to present yourself so exactly to my ideas in the form of a turkey-poot, casting about, with a pitiful poked-out neck, for its lost companion. How was I diverted by the fine lady's fine lamentation, in her fine coach, for the loss of your society, which is to her just such a loss as our late friend, the blind philosopher, would sustain on the removal of a Claud-landscape from his apartment! When I came to the Turkey-poot passage, I exclaimed, with Lady Grace, "O! I see them, I see them!" You always stoop, and poke out your pretty long neck, when you are non-plussed.

My curiosity is on fire to become acquainted with my sisters, the old maids, of whom I hear so much, and which are said to be the bard's. My bookseller, neglecting my order, has vexed me by delay. What an age of wit and genius is the present! But the world will never be cured of its cant about "weakened nature and exhausted art." Shaftesbury and Addison so canted in their period, now called the Augustan: Envy of contemporary claims produces, and will ever produce it. We have plenty of ravens, that fly croaking about, and seek to darken, with their flapping wings, the present golden day. Farewell!

LETTER XXIV.

COURT DEWES, Esq.

Lichfield, Jan. 30, 1786.

COLD and dreary was my journey from the mansion of many pleasures at Wellsburn, through the snowy length of unjoyous roads: but however destitute of bodily comforts, filial hopes, the delight which I knew my return would diffuse through the dear aged bosom, recompensed the

chillness and monotony of outward objects. The happiness my father expressed on my return, made it impossible for me to regret the loss of any gratifications which he had not shared. It is not to you that I scruple to acknowledge this, amidst my grateful thanks for your late attentions, as well as animated welcome. They have left me largely your debtor.

All the politeness of your spirit is in the reason you give for the decreasing interest of the Task, the two first books of which I had the honour to read to you. But, in truth, the interest of that poem does decrease on its progress. It is ill for the interest of a muse, at least with people of benevolent taste, when she quits the mazes of sportive invention, pathetic description, and generous sentiment, for those thorny paths of acrimonious satire, whose darkness is rendered visible by the flashes of the reader's just indignati on.

As to the Old Maids, I still rely upon internal evidence respecting the author of that work. Perhaps I wish no man had written it, while I feel that no woman would; but I persevere in believing there is but one man in Europe, since it lost Voltaire, whose species of wit is responsible for that very uncommon composition.

Apropos of old maids.—After a gradual decline of a few months, we have lost dear Mrs. Porter, the earliest object of Dr Johnson's love. This was some years before he married her mother. In youth, her fair, clean complexion, bloom, and rustic prettiness, pleased the men. More than once she might have married advantageously; but as to the enamoured affections,

"High Taurus' snow, fann'd by the eastern wind,
Was not more cold."

Spite of the accustomed petulance of her temper, and odd perverseness, since she had no malignance, I regret her as a friendly creature, of intrinsic worth, with whom, from childhood, I had been intimate. She was one of those few beings who, from a sturdy singularity of temper, and some prominent good qualities of head and heart, was enabled, even in her days of scanty maintenance, to make society glad to receive, and pet the grown spoiled child. Affluence was not hers till it came to her in her fortieth year, by the death of her eldest brother. From the age of twenty till that period, she had boarded in Lichfield with Dr Johnson's mother, who still kept that little bookseller's shop, by which her husband had supplied the scanty means of existence.