country, its wild and solemn features. The mythology, if less various, and less interesting than the Pagan machinery of Homer, is much more grand, awful, and impressive.

I confess, however, that inevitable weariness attends a long perusal of Ossian. We should not attempt to read him regularly, but to contemplate him in detached passages. We should look attentively at his landscapes, but perhaps not consider them for a much longer time than we could, without weariness, gaze at a landscape of Claude's, or Salvator's. Could I persuade you thus to take up Ossian, at intervals, I am persuaded you would grow accustomed to his manner, and feel the truth of the poet Gray's assertion respecting these poems, that "imagination resided, in all her pomp, many centuries ago, upon the bleak and barren mountains of Scotland." Adieu!

VOL. I.

LETTER LII.

GEORGE HARDINGE, ESQ.

Lichfield, Dec. 29, 1786.

"I BLUSH, and hide my sword." You have disarmed me by the kindness of your letter, which I received yesterday. The love, respect, and veneration which I feel for my superiors in the science most dear to me; the gratitude which burns in my bosom for the delight their works have afforded me, and which will not admit my hearing, with unwounded ear, or without indignant justification, their just claims to admiration disputed; these, I know are amongst the best qualities of my heart; yet I begin to fear that this, I hope, generous zeal may have carried me, in my late letters to you, somewhat beyond the bounds of politeness.

Beneath your preceding reproofs for what I perceived you considered as arrogance, I could pout and be sullen; wrap myself up in conscious integrity of spirit, and say to myself, " He is a fine gentleman, and lives with senators, judges, and lords; he looks down upon contemporary genius in the poetic line, upon existing bards, and me,

their handmaid ;-let him leave us our beads and our maple dish, with which he twits us; they will one day, perhaps, be more honourable to our memories than "stars and strings." We will remember how the genius of Collins was, while he lived, neglected and despised, till the poverty and disappointment, produced by that neglect and scorn, made a chaos of his brain, and an ice-stone of his heart. We will reflect that such contumely is no longer disgraceful to him, but shames the times in which it was inflicted; and thus the love of fame, that spur which raises the clear spirit, shall not be blunted by the fastidious disdain of any of our contemporaries. In the shelter of independence, we can smile at literary injustice, and commit our pretensions to posterity. If they are cogent they will prevail, and we shall be remembered when those who, despise us shall be forgotten;-if they are not cogent, the dismission of them into the limbo of vanity will be nothing to us. Provided we have taken care of better things, we shall be spared the mortification of seeing them tossed about in that windy region, and finally sinking in its oblivious gulf.”

Thus could I philosophize away all the mortification of your disdain-but against your kindness can find no shield.

I have lately been combating Sophia's poetical prejudices, as well as yours. It is these whimsical dislikes to immaterial circumstances which makes so many people of sense and feeling bad critics. Criticism must proceed upon a large scale, or her efforts will but deceive herself, and mislead others. She may, it is true, without losing dignity, slightly notice slight things, but the only requisites on which she should strongly insist are general consistence of metaphor, and happiness of allusion, appropriation as to character, vigour of idea, perspicuity of expression, accuracy and general grace of style, and picturesque power in the epithets. Where these are, how greatly is it below the dignity of her office to indulge unmeaning aversions to this or that order of verse; or, with yet more puerile petulance, to quarrel with words for their mere sound, and even to wage idle war with individual letters of the alphabet.

Above all, it is necessary, to form the useful and enlightening critic, that he should have none of those partialities which may lead him to admire in one writer what he dislikes in another. Justice does not allow us to go farther than, in consideration of ruder times, to pardon in an ancient what we might not be so ready to forgive in a modern;

we must not preclude to the moderns those daring graces which we admire in older writers, since beauty is confined to no form, no clime, no period.

You intreat me to relieve your solitude in Ormond Street. It must certainly be very profound! Heavens! with the bar, the senate, the opera, the Siddons, the lords, and the ladies, how is it that you procure leisure for such copiousness of epistolary intercourse? I fancy, like poor Chatterton, that child of genius, you never sleep. I wish I could be superior to the necessity of such vulgar renovation!

LETTER LIII.

MISS WESTON.

Lichfield, Jan 15, 1787.

I AM sorry you find your marine shield so vulnerable, opposed to these wintry skies; but, as they have been uncommonly mild since you wrote to me, I trust, enabling you to use exercise, they prove salutary.