a tacit confession, totally frustrating the design of concealment. I have no time to waste over novels of mediocrity. Those great, various sublime, and beautiful works, the Clarissa and Grandison, to which I frequently recur with unabated delight, when I choose to give my understanding and my imagination the highest possible feast;—yes, it is they who render almost all other novels insipid to me. The Sorrows of Werter, the Old English Baron, the Caroline of Lichfield, the Lady Catesby's Letters and Excursion, by Mrs Brooke, are the only things of the sort, published within these late years, which have strongly fascinated me. I confess the genius and excellence of the justly celebrated Burney's. In many parts they interest, in many affect, but quite as often weary me; and my spirit finds no warm enchantment on their pages. Their low and insipid characters are too frequently obtruded. It is well to intermix such personages, but not well to produce them often, or detain them long. I no more like attending to their conversation upon paper, than I should like their society in real life.

Zeluco is a work of considerable ability. I have been vainly wishing for leisure to give it a second reading, assured that I shall then be more gratified, when satisfied curiosity, respecting the

fate of the principal characters, shall allow me to examine the merit of the frequent episodes.

I cannot quit the subject of imaginary histories, without speaking to you of the great pleasure I have received from the animated testimonies in your Tour, to the intuitive powers of of my halfadored Richardson. Charming is your transition to the Poretto family, when you describe the proud, the bigotted, and melancholy Bologna.

It is very polite to assure me that I should be welcome in the London circles;-but I feel so deep a sense of wanting power to add any thing to their spirit, and the circles to which I have been long confined by my duties, are so insensible to all which I might perhaps give them, that the hitherto ungratified thirst of retirement increases fast upon me, as life advances.

I was taught to hope, from Helen Williams and Sophia Weston, that you would have passed through Lichfield in your rambles, but, like the sister hope of their visit, it vanished.

Mr Piozzi's kind postcript to your last, obliges me extremely; tell him so, I entreat you, and add my best compliments.

Adieu! my dear Madam-believe me, with every conviction of your energetic and brilliant abilities, which put our sex's indolence to shame, faithfully yours.

LETTER LXXXVI.

To the EDITOR of the GENERAL EVENING

POST.

Dec. 24, 1789.

SIR,-I am induced, by a paragraph in one of your late papers, to assure you, upon authority, that Miss Seward has no tragedy in contemplation; that if she could imagine she possessed dramatic talents, their exertion would be repressed by recollecting the coolness with which Mr Jephson's three last fine tragedies were received; and by the blindness of our public critics to their excellence. Bold metaphoric language, and striking imagery, in energetic, yet simple phrase, is the Shakespearean style; but if, like Mr Jephson, a writer adopts it, he is reproached with imitating Shakespeare. Every dramatic author is of some school, either of the Grecian, the French, or the English. Which of these is best by their fruits, we have known.

He who writes tragedies, should endeavour to catch a portion of that spirit which reigns over every heart that can feel, and over every under

standing that can receive and retain forcible impressions. To the vigour of thought and Ianguage, he should add that just contempt for the pedantic rules of Aristotle which shall enable him to shew the persons of his drama in various situations. So shall he escape the necessity of supplying the place of business, and of incident, by long and frigid declamation. I am, Sir, &c.

LETTER LXXXVII.

MRS TAYLOR *.

Jan. 13, 1790.

No, indeed, and indeed, my dear friend, neither to fickleness or disregard, or shadow of picque, has my silence been owing. Convinced that an alarming oppression at my stomach, and difficulty of breathing, which attacked me last spring, was owing to too much sedentary employment, I reluctantly determined to make longer pauses than usual between my replies to the letters of my correspondents.

Very eloquently did your letter of May the 5th describe the sweetness of maternal happiness.

Late Miss Scott.

That happiness must vary its form, but never will it be more delicious and unallayed, than while your infant draws her sustenance from your bosom.

Heaven yet indulges to my prayers and wishes the existence of my not less dear, because "childchanged father;" but it is an anxious and alarmed life that I live, better, however, far better, than that of lonely orphanism. Your warm praise of my two sonnets in the Gentleman's Magazine for March 1789, delights me. Sonnet-writing suits my scantiness of leisure, better than any other kind of verse composition. The consciousness of being involved in a work of length, often unable to procure an hour in a week to go on with it, would be oppressive. If Miss Williams can obtain seclusion competent to the epic task, which you wish to see attempted by one of us, I shall be glad—but nothing is more impossible than that I should procure it; and if I could, Captain Cook, great and good as he was, should not be my hero; because my elegy is in a degree epic, and forming a compendium of his character, his virtues, and his adventures, would involve an inevitable awkwardness, were the same pen to dilate what it had previously, and by choice, compressed.

I think entirely with you, that Miss Williams was not happy in her choice of measure, in the poem on the Slave Trade. I told her so; yet