and hammers." I question not Mr Wyatt's power of bestowing a great accession of future beauty; but he says it must be four years ere the alterations will be completed, and the service resumed. A four year's silence for "the pealing organ, and the full-voic'd choir!" Four years! Ah! how many of us, who delight in their power to lift the rising spirit in warmer devotion to its God; how many of us, before they are elapsed, may be slumbering in the impervious silence of the grave! Four years! no inconsiderable portion of human existence! Alas!" a few lagging winters, and a few wanton springs, and the life of man is at an end.” Of those which shall be allotted to my friends at Hopton, may neither disease abridge the number, nor affliction darken the course!

LETTER LX.

REV. WH. BAGSHOT STEVENS OF REPTON.

Lichfield, April 11, 1787.

YOUR Ode to Delius is beautifully rendered. O! the immeasurable difference between a poet's translation and that of those insipid versifiers, who

brew Horace in English, and make dead smallbeer of him! Your Ode* is champagne from the

* Ode to Delius, from Horace, Book II, Ode 5th, by the Rev. Mr Stevens.

"Plung'd in the troubled tempest of distress,
Or borne on fortune's favouring billows high,
Weak fears, vain insolence, alike repress,

Remembering still my Delius thou must die :

"Die, whether grief distain each sadden'd hour,
Or pleasure bloom perpetual in the glade,
Where the stream glances by the festal bower,

And pines with poplars blend their grateful shade.

"O! hither haste, thy wines, thy perfumes bring,
And pluck thy roses ere their sweets decay,
Whilst fate and fortune, ever on the wing,

And youth's short lustre cheer thy passing day.

"Soon shall thy purchas'd pomp no more be thine,
Thy groves, thy fountains, and thy villas fair,
For thee no more thy hoarded treasures shine,
No more for thee, but for thy grasping heir.

"Wealth gilds the victim, but it cannot save;
The final power to one impartial doom,
Compels alike the monarch and the slave,

Ah! hope not pity from th' insatiate tomb!

"Fate ceaseless moves her universal urn,
Where human lots in mix'd confusion lie;
Each, soon or late, must issue in its turn,

And the sad prize of mortals is to die."

vines of Aonia. The first, second, third, and fifth stanzas charm me. The fourth is very well; but I think less beautifully rendered than the others. The last line of the concluding verse I feel a want of ac

does not quite satisfy me.

curacy in it, but shall perhaps find difficulty in explaining the nature of my objection, viz.

"And the sad prize of mortals is to die."

I

Dying is an action, though generally an involuntary one. Is not a prize rather something that we obtain than that we do? To die is properly called the doom of mortality; but can it as properly be called a prize or gift which it receives? Death might indisputably so be termed; but dying, being an action, I think cannot. translated this ode some time since. That * sion of mine is from a prose translation, given me by my learned and ingenious friend Mr Dewes. It is more paraphrastic, and probably much more amenable to just criticism than yours, drawn from the pure well-head.

ver

Let me exhort you not to suffer the stupid impertinence of our hireling critics to repress the exertions of your genius, assured, as I trust you

* It will be found in the author's Miscellany, with her other translations and paraphrases of Horace's Odes.-S.

feel, that, in whatever transiently eclipsing clouds dulness or envy may involve them, yet that fame shall one day consecrate to immortality the claims of the poet,

"If she be right invok'd in warbled song."

Adio!

LETTER LXI.

JOSEPH SYKES, Eso.*

Lichfield, April 13, 1787.

RIGHT glad am I to perceive, in your last letter, the sprightly glow of your fancy; and for a reason more material than my own amusement, since well I know the son's danger incompatible with the father's vivacity. Silent as you are upon the subject, I see, in the gaiety of your style, Mr J. Sykes's recovery-yes, as in a mirror. On your own late indisposition, I will not condole with you. The recollection of past sufferings, merely bodily, and that have left behind them no vestige of pain or danger, give to re

* Of Westella, near Hull.

turning health the zest of delight. The advancing year will, I trust, perfectly restore your strength, though spring is at present somewhat sullen, and comes on shivering, and with a tardy step; but I trust she will brighten on her progress, diffusing health and gladness from her wings, amidst the bowers of West Ella.

With all Mr-'s genius, knowledge, and varied eloquence of intellect, I cannot persist in recommending it to my friends to put their sons under his tuition. Alas! he has not one ounce of ballast to those full sails of wit and ingenuity with which he steers amidst the dangerous shoals of life. His taste for expence has been, beyond all measure, inconsistent with the retired situation in which he fixed himself; with the narrowness of his certain income, and with his plan of pupilage. That taste involved him in perplexities, from which he will find it difficult to The consequences of this infatuation have unhinged his mind, and incapacitated him for the energetic and assiduous attention necessary in the education of youth, particularly at the period of life when he would receive pupils, during the ambiguous years of commencing manhood.

emerge.

when

My father, then in the full vigour of his mind, warmly remonstrated with Mr first he took a house in Eyam for that purpose,

,