positions, both vocal and instrumental; to which, when a trifling ballad has succeeded, its notes have been imbibed with eager transport, and dismissed with vollies of applause. A great master takes a common country-dance as the subject of his solo, and forms, upon that worthless ground, the most elegant embroidery that florid and inventive fancy, united to consummate taste, can produce. Strange it is, to observe no general transport expressed during those daring efforts of ingenuity, while his return to Malbrook, or "Come, haste to the wedding," has been hailed with the glance of delight from a thousand eyes. By the same prevalence of bad taste, have I seen á London audience neglect the delicate and pathetic songs of the late Miss Linly, when the more powerful, but coarser and inexpressive tones of the then Miss Philips, now Mrs Crouch, were received with the loudest manual acclamation. I have, therefore, my doubts, whether Mrs Smith, whose voice is of such transcendent sweetness, who-melts her liquid notes into each other with such charming flexibility, wanting the power to make a great noise, could ever be a popular public singer. But her father will never venture to launch her timid bark upon the capricious tides of metropolitan favour. It was at Manchester that I beheld, for the first time, the new-risen star of the harmonic world, Mara. Her fires are very dazzling, it must be confessed. She has, however, some harsh notes in the lower part of her voice, when she throws it out fortissimo; and the excursive cadences she uses are too gay ornaments for the mourning robes of Handel's solemn songs. Her Italian pathetic songs are enchanting ;her bravura ones stupendous ;—but those violent efforts, though miraculously successful, were as unpleasing to my ear, as they were visibly painful to the Syren who hazarded them. Ah! it was not tones in such supernatural altitudes that made Ulysses struggle in his voluntary chains. Certainly, however, Mara is a glorious singer. It is the false taste of the multitude which tempts her to aim at astonishing her audience, rather than affecting their passions. The winds of autumn are beginning to blow hollow and winterly, and to mourn around these bowers; and her umbrage is changing its varied and mellow tints, for the din green and sickly yellow. How partial is nature to that last named colour!it is the first hue of her flowers, and the last of her leaves. But how different the golden glow of her crocus-borders, in the infancy of the year, to the wan lemon-tint upon the leaf that clings trembling to the naked spray, and quivers in the bleak gale! Lichfield has lost many of those inhabitants whose society used to gild the gloom of the approaching season; but a few are yet within her mansions, "Who, when it falls, and when the wind and rain Adieu. LETTER XXI. WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ. Lichfield, Dec. 23, 1785. I TAKE up my pen to you on the eve of a wintry excursion over roads white with snows, and in defiance of the keen Eurus. My purposed visit is to Mr Dewes, at his seat in Warwickshire. Of his talents and worth I have before spoken to you. His lovely sister, Mrs Granville, meets me there. Though an esquire and a justice, he little resembles his brethren of that tribe. Last summer, he told me, he had danced up to town, in a herd of them, to the Handelian commemoration, like the brutes after Orpheus. My dear father's health seems to have recruited much since his last paralytic seizure, six weeks ago. I impute the precious amendment to more submission to restraint in his diet, and to more care in avoiding the inclement gales. It encourages me to make this kindly solicited visit, in despite of the rigours of the season, and its landscape devastation,— I go "Dim winter's naked hedge, and plashy field." where it is well understood how to cheer the sullen day. I am gratified by your praise of my translation of the two odes of Horace*. You seem to prefer the ode addressed to Melpomene. My favourite is that which recommends a frugal sacrifice; it appears to me more pleasing, though perhaps less sublime. Scarce an hour has past since Mr Saville brought me, with all the triumph of poetic taste in his eyes, what he justly called an high treat, * They will be found in the author's Poetic Miscellany, together with many other translations or paraphrases from the Horatian lyrics. fresh imported from Aonian bowers. "I have tasted," said he, "just sipt, and found its flavour delicious; if you are not charmed, with the opening of this new poem, the Task, I shall resign my pretences to know what will please you." He began with those harmonious tones, that spirit, that variety of cadence, which makes poetry poetry indeed, "I sing the sofa-I who lately sung Faith, hope, and charity, and touch'd with awe We had only time for the gay exordium, which traces the progress of chairs from the rude invention of the three-footed-stool, which received the royal weight of the immortal Alfred, to the luxurious sofa of the present day. On my life this seems a spirited bard; his description paints admirably; it makes me see, with my mind's eye, the old-fashioned worked chairs, which, in former days, I have observed in Gothic mansions; observed them with a smile which expressed the contempt inspired by the refinement of modern days, and the progress of the arts. Exactly does the author bring back those venerable chairs, with their disproportioned imitations and faded gaudiness: |