since it does not convince ?" Henceforth I shall be disposed to think all critical investigation useless, since a woman of your fine understanding can maintain her prejudices against a proposition so very self-evident, as that all which is worthy to please an enlightened mind, as truth of character; interest of situation; the force of imagery; the glow of description; the animation of apostrophe, and the pathos of complaint; may be almost equally well conveyed in one form of composition as in another. But if from the measure, its nature, and its arrangements, rather than from those essentials, results the material charm of the poetic science, then is that science but "as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”

I cannot resist making one more effort to convince you that you have placed your sensations to a wrong cause, and are unjust to yourself in avowing and persisting in a prejudice, which one quar ter of an hour's reflection would enable you to eradicate.

You have often declared a particular fondness for Lord Lyttleton's lovely monody on the death of his wife;—yet it is a Pindaric Ode. Beattie's Minstrel also I know you love, which is also written in a species of the lyric measure. Tasting the beauty of those compositions, you prove that it is not the ode-measures which of themselves

displease your ear, or perplex your attention. If Gray's Ode to the Lyre, which, charming as those poems are, is poetically superior to them both, does not charm you, since all the three are equally odes, it must be that the objects of Gray's ode are presented to the imagination; those of Lyttleton to the heart; those of Beattie's to the understanding. This difference between them would have subsisted in the same degree if each had written their poem in Pope's general measure, the ten feet couplet, which is your favourite style. Those high and picturesque graces of the art, to which you are more insensible than I can account for, do, it is certain, generally wear the lyric dress. It is therefore the nature of the objects often presented in odes, not the style of composition, which fails to interest and please you. The odes of Horace in Latin, and the odes of Akenside in English, are taken in a much lower tone than those of the Grecian Pindar, and those of our native Gray-that is, their subjects are more familiar, and common-life. I should think they would please, and at length induce you to cry out with Juliet,

"What's in a name ?"—these, which are surely odes,
To sense, and to affection, speak as plain.

As Pope's twin couplet."

KE

Suffer me to make an experiment upon your supreme aversion, the measure of the legitimate sonnet. Most of the stanzas in your darling monody by Lyttleton, are capable of forming a distinct sonnet in the Miltonic numbers, and in the manner of Petrarch's, who wrote chiefly in that metre, though his fame as a poet has augmented through so many ages.

FIRST SONNET.

"AT length have I escap'd each human eye,
Escap'd from every duty, every care,

That in my mournful thoughts might claim a share,
Importunate; arrest the bursting sigh,

Or force my tears their flowing stream to dry!

Screen'd by these cypress shades from every glare

Of evening lustres, that so vainly fair

Gild the green valley; let me now supply,
Beneath this lone retreat, which sorrow needs,

All that may give my burden'd heart relief,
And suffer it to pour its tide of grief;
Of grief, alas! that other grief exceeds

Far as love's tender throb, and vivid glow,
Transcend in joy's fine zest all other joys below."

months, then, is to be my utmost hope. Well I embrace your two months with their

"Sweet, reluctant, indolent delay."

No epithets in Milton, to be sure! Come, I must at last confess your contention in their favour triumphant, from the proofs you produce of their frequency on the pages of that verse demi-god. You write like an angel, and I would go to the end of the world for a lock of your hair; and so pray send me one at the two months' end-and let me carry off your picture by force from Romney.

"It's rather impudent, after all, that you should be so eloquent, so able, yet so feminine, so touching. It is not fair;—you ought to be an elephant, and you are a charming woman, dear to me as any one of your enchanting sex, though I never saw you but once; exactly an hundred and nine years ago. Farewel, Urganda!"

LETTER LVII.

MRS COTTON.

Lichfield, March 23, 1787.

You misunderstood me if, in speaking of the refined, the learned and eloquent Mr

S

union with a woman of such mere common-life talents, you thought I meant that happiness was confined to people of exalted intellect. So far from asserting that idea, I am inclined to believe those the happiest who mutually plod on in the narrow circle of every-day minds, and adopt prejudices for principles. No; I said, and I still think it ill for married happiness, where the abilities, acquirements, and pursuits are very unequal. Rochefoucault says, we cannot long love those by whom we are despised, or for whom we feel any degree of contempt. Something very like contempt must arise where the disparity is extreme, and the pursuits wholly dissimilar. My life has not been very short, or by any means unobservant. Many miseries have I witnessed consequent upon intellectual inequality, where people have a great deal of time for companionable purposes. Where