though not usual, would have been pleasing to my friend John Nichols.

"We heard of the Isted family in our passage hither, but did not get a sight of them. I hope they are now well, and all connected with you-particularly Mrs. Percy, to whom, as well as to yourself, Mrs. Nares unites in sending best compliments and wishes. I am, my Lord, with great respect, your obliged and obedient servant, "ROBERT NARES."

British Museum, Feb. 6, 1804.

"MY LORD, "I have heard, with much concern, that your sight has suffered severely from the complaint in your eyes, which was mentioned in your last kind letter to me. Allow me to express my very earnest hope, that you do still and may continue to enjoy that sense in a sufficient degree to conduce to your own comfort, and even for literary use. Few eyes have been better employed during the time of their vigour.

"You were doubtless informed long ago of the miserable yet characteristic end of that wretched being Ritson; whose insanity will now be presumed to have shewn itself originally in his abuse of you, and many other persons who deserved a very opposite treatment. You have seen, I hope, and approved, our review of his impious and absurd book on Animal Food,* which, in my opinion (and, as I did not write it, I may give my opinion), is very much superior to the attack upon it in the Edinburgh Review. There was spirit in that; but it took some things for granted in argument which are not true. I have hitherto deferred our account of his Metrical Romances and Bibliographia Poetica, thinking that you might still be desirous to state something in opposition to his malicious attacks. But I should wish now to have it introduced before long.

"I shall be very glad to have some account of you, however short, from yourself; the truth being in general better than rumours or conjectures, as I hope it will prove in this instance. I have seen nothing of the Isteds for a considerable time, George excepted, and him not very lately. Mr. Isted is, with many thousands more, defending his country against an attack which some of the wisest seamen still tell us cannot, in the nature of things, be * See British Critic for Nov. 1803, p. 483.

made. God, I trust, will restore peace and tranquillity in good time, and, if we deserve it, prosperity. Mrs. Nares unites in best respects to Mrs. Percy and yourself; and I remain your Lordship's obedient and much obliged servant, ROBERT NARES."

"MY LORD,

Lichfield, August 16, 1804.

"In the last letter with which you favoured me, dated Feb. 16, 1804, you gave me hopes that you would soon gratify me with some communication respecting the unfortunate Ritson; and, though I have but too much reason to believe that the increasing malady in your eyes has unavoidably delayed the execution of your promise, I cannot prevail upon myself to commit an account of his 'Romances' to the press, without informing you that I am about to do so. As the book bears the date of 1802, I cannot well delay the mention of it any longer, nor could have postponed it to this time, had not the singular catastrophe which concluded the author's strange career afforded a kind of excuse for it. If there is anything that you particularly wish to have said, and you cannot conveniently write, perhaps you will have the goodness to dictate to some other person what you desire to have inserted. If such a communication should soon be transmitted to me here, it would be in very good time for insertion.

"I regretted that your communications respecting Lady Mary W. Montagu and Queen Caroline came too late to be of use. They were addressed to me in February 1804, and the account of her works had been printed in the 'British Critic' before the close of 1803.* I shall, however, carefully preserve your letter, and take some other opportunity of vindicating Lady Hertford from the imputation thrown upon her by Lady Mary's editor.

"I shall continue at this place, as usual, till towards the end of September, and it would be a great gratification to me, not only to receive your promised communication, but much more to hear of that amendment in your health which must be wished by every friend to good literature, and by none more truly, or with more reason, than by your Lordship's much obliged and faithful servant, "ROBERT NARES. "P.S. Mrs. Nares is with me, and desires to be pro*See British Critic for Dec. 1803, p. 643.

perly remembered to your Lordship, Mrs. Percy, and your family, particularly to Mrs. Isted, if she should be still with you."

وو

Dromore House, Dec. 28, 1804.

Bishop PERCY to Mr. Archdeacon NARES. "DEAR SIR, "I should long since have acknowledged your last favour, wherein you were so good as to offer to insert in the British Critic' for October any corrections or additions to your account of Ritson's book in that of September, but that number I received too late to avail myself of your obliging offer. I therefore thought that perhaps it might be as well if I submitted a few remarks, if you approved of them, to be subjoined in a note to your mention of Ritson's book in your general preface or introduction to the present twenty-fourth volume; and, as that, if I mistake not, is usually delivered along with the 'British Critic' for January, I hope these will not come too late, which a great influx of business, in the present declining state of my sight, has prevented me from attending to sooner.

"I find by Ritson's malignity in suppressing any reference to my Essay on the Ancient Metrical Romances,' that you have supposed his quotation was taken from Mr. Ellis; but I do not think this of so much consequence as his wicked attempts to wound my moral feelings. On this subject, what if you were to subjoin the following note?

"Mr. Ritson has disgraced his pages by the most illiberal abuse of the Editor of the "Reliques," &c. and by vile insinuations against his veracity; yet these, I think, every reader of discernment will find self-confuted. For when he says, in his note p. 107, that Mr. Steevens had assured him that the Bishop of Dromore's nephew had never seen one word of the Advertisement prefixed to the last edition, to which his name is subscribed, he must suppose the subscriber not to have the curiosity of the most common or illiterate reader. This falsehood, therefore, confutes itself.

"So again, in page 142, he would excite suspicion from Mr. Tyrwhitt's not having seen the old MS. although that is fully accounted for in the Advertisement above mentioned. And he further adds, "nor would the late

excellent Geo. Steevens, on the Bishop's personal application, consent to sanction the authenticity of the printed copy," scil. of the Reliques, "with his signature." Now the reader may be assured that while the last edition was preparing, the old MS. in question was left for near a year with Mr. Nichols the printer; and all the original Editor's friends and acquaintance invited to inspect it. Among these, Mr. Steevens, calling one morning, spent an hour or two in examining the MS. and minutely collated one of those pieces extracted from it, which are declared to be printed verbatim from the original. With the exactness of this he professed himself so well satisfied, that he allowed his name to be appealed to, among those of the other gentlemen mentioned in the Advertisement. Now, from this short inspection it was impossible that he could be desired to "sanction" "with his signature" the printed copy of the work in general, as this base and malicious detractor would insinuate.

"It is sufficient to mention these two instances to put the reader on his guard against the other false insinuations and defamatory assertions scattered through every part of the work above mentioned, which, as Ritson derived all he knew on the subject originally from the Bishop, and had never received the least provocation, can only be accounted for from his avowed hatred of all Priests and Priestcraft, (for so he styled religion and its ministers), which he carried to such a horrible excess, that he was engaged in a work to prove our Blessed Saviour an impostor, when a dreadful paroxysm of frenzy put an end to his existence.'

"You will probably think the above sufficient for your present purpose; although, indeed, Ritson's whole introduction, and many of his notes, are filled with petty cavils, and contradictions without proof, of every thing I had advanced in my several essays, which, perhaps, your readers may be desired to examine before they assent to his opinions.* But whatever use you make of the above, believe me to be, with our best wishes and compliments of the season to you and Mrs. Nares,

"Dear Sir,

"Your very obedient humble servant,
"THO. DROmore.

Mr. Nares adopted the Bishop's suggestion, and printed these particulars almost verbatim in the British Critic for Jan. 1805, pp. 98, 99.

LETTERS

of MR. ARCHDEACON NARES to various Friends.

The following letter, it is believed, is by Mr. Archdeacon Nares at all events, it is reprinted as an interesting memorial of the early talents of the celebrated Dr. Crotch. To the GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.

"MR. URBAN, Cambridge, June 13, 1789. "As Dr. Burney, in his last volume of The History of Music,' has professed to give some account of the present state of that science, and has bestowed many pages on composers and performers now living, why has he omitted to mention one, whose uncommon talents justly entitle him to a very distinguished place in such a work? I allude to William Crotch. It appears the more unaccountable, because Dr. Burney is a patron and friend of Crotch,* was the first who brought his superior genius forth to public notice, and, in the Philosophical Transactions, has given a long detail of his infant powers. But the Historian of music ought to have recorded the process of those early powers; he should have informed the world, that he who, at five years old, was capable of all described by him, is now, at fourteen, a still greater prodigy of genius; that he is the composer of a sacred oratorio, the performance of which has lately excited the astonishment of some of the ablest judges, who acknowledge that, in the contrivance of his harmonies, he has shown himself a complete master of the science, and has equalled the greatest composers in solemn and sublime effect; that as a performer on the organ, and a conductor, there are few, if any, who excel him, or who seem so thoroughly acquainted with the genius of that instrument. This, which is but a scanty account of what the reader had a right to expect in a History of Music,' brought down to the year 1789, may perhaps serve to induce Dr. Burney to make some enquiry on a subject, which he will find much more worth his attention than when he formerly examined it; and, if he considers the omission as a defect in his work, to take some means of doing justice to neglected genius. "Yours, &c.

R. N."

*This eminent musician was born at Norwich, July 5, 1775. An account of his early genius was also given by Mr. Daines Barrington, in his "Miscellanies." In 1797 he succeeded Dr. Hayes as Professor of Music in the University of Oxford, and still occupies that situation (1847).

† Copied into the Gent. Mag. 1779, p. 589.

"It was performed in Trinity Hall, Cambridge, on the King's birthday."