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and poetic landscape. Those enchanting compositions, the Seasons, are almost wholly descriptive; yet know I not any poetry more capable of exalting the imagination, and expanding the heart.

As for your dislike to imperfect rhymes, which you would not allow, except in passages which express conflicting emotions, I will venture to assert, that, in general, whoever looks on poetry with the painter's eye, will find himself as little disposed to quarrel with his author for an imperfect rhyme in a passage of scenic description, as in one that conveys the struggles of impassioned affection. All our best writers continually give us precedents for their usage. A poet will lose much more on the side of sense, and grace pression, than he will gain on the side of jingle, by narrowing his scale of rhymes in the pursuit of imaginary perfection, which, when attained, cloys the very ear by its sameness. Pope, the most musical of all our bards, gives us the imperfect rhymes very lavishly in all his verses, and equally in his picturesque as in his pathetic passages. Out of instances innumerable, I shall select a few.

First, rob'd in white the beauteous nymph adores, With head uncover'd, the cosmetic powers," &c.

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Soft yielding minds to water glide away," &c. “And sip, with nymphs, their elemental tea," &c.

"Late as I rang'd the crystal wilds of air,

In the clear mirror of thy ruling star,

I saw," &c.

Rape of the Lock.

"So Zembla's rocks, the beauteous work of frost, Rise high in air, and glitter on the coast."

Temple of Fame.

One of the most musical of all his ever-musical couplets rhymes imperfectly; sufficient proof that such imperfection does not of itself wound the ear: observe it—

"Let softer strains ill-fated Henry mourn, And palms eternal flourish round his urn."

Windsor Forest.

You profess also an aversion to notes in poetry. In the extract I sent you from Dr Darwin's beautiful poem, yet unpublished, the Botanic Garden, you spurn the note concerning the vast variety of mosses, and call it pedantic, because it tells you what you already know. To me, and to thousands, who may feel the poetic beauties of this work, the note is interesting and instructive. All poetic allusions to facts, or to branches of science, mot universally known, demand notes. Mr Aikin,

in his charming treatise on the application of natural history to poetry, exhorts the bard to avail himself of philosophical illustration; but almost every allusion to modern philosophical science, requires a note to make it generally understood, since minute explanation cannot, with any happiness, be committed to verse. That note, which men of science, who are sometimes apt to discard that useful guide, common sense, in their decisions, deem impertinent, superfluous, pedantic, becomes the vehicle of much useful instruction, by generalizing the knowledge of many a curious fact. Unanswerable and self-evident is the assertion, that those who understand a passage in which a circumstance, not universally known, is alluded to, are absurd, if they stop themselves to examine that note which kindly explains it to the less learned reader; but to the scholar, where is the inconvenience that it is there? Does he grudge its obliging him to turn over his leaf a few seconds the sooner for the space it occupies? It is better that they, who have previously dined, should see a banquet before them, than that the hungry should want food. I have eaten, and am satisfied, says the selfish epicure; I hate the sight of this meat. Cannot you let it alone then, and give me leave to eat, who want sustenance ?

One excellence in Mr

-'s poetry, above that of other writers, is the light thrown by it, and by its valuable notes, upon various sciences. No person can be familiar with his writings, without acquiring from them a very competent fund of knowledge in history, biography, and in the elements of art and science.

All you say on the subject of our friend's temper, is, I must reluctantly acknowledge, but too just; yet, was his disposition so meliorated and illumed by the flattering prospects then playing before him in delusive vision, that the unalloyed pleasure his society gave me, obliterated from my memory all traces of that tetchy unprovoked spleen, which had often dashed our intimacy with bitterness. Your recent observations concerning its teasing influence, acted upon those traces like fire upon characters written with lemon juice. I sigh as they appear again before me, clouding and staining the lustre of fine talents, and many excellent qualities. Ah! pity that they ever existed,

"To quarrel with the noblest grace he owns,
And put it to the foil!"

Let us all take warning, and correct our acids and sub-acids of every sort.

LETTER XVIII.

TO MISS HELEN WILLIAMS.

Lichfield, Aug. 25, 1785.

I WRITE to you, dear Helen, amidst the bustle of those feminine preparations, which necessarily precede the design of attending an harmonic festival at Manchester, where the abbey drums are to thunder, Mara exhibit vocal miracles, and, what is much more to the genuine lovers of musical pathos and energy, our friend Saville is to open the Messiah, and take all the principal tenor and contra-tenor songs. He unites poetic taste, and the vivid emotions of a feeling heart, and of an high and kindling spirit, to a rich, extensive, and powerful voice, and the most perfect knowledge of his science. It is the former which direct, with unerring power, the energy and pathos of his expression. Others sing with as much, perhaps more musical fancy, and artful elegance; but he alone, of all his brethren of the lyre, sings with impulses congenial to those with which Milton wrote and Handel composed, though he never aims to dazzle or astonish his audience.

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