of the quarrel that they have with elisions in blank verse. But where is the remedy? In vain should you or I, and a few hundreds more perhaps who have studied his versification, tell them of the superior majesty of it, and that for that majesty it is greatly indebted to those elisions. In their ears they are discord and dissonance, they lengthen the line beyond its due limits, and are therefore not to be endured. There is a whimsical inconsistence in the judgment of modern readers in this particular. Ask them all round, whom do you account the best writer of blank verse? and they will reply almost to to a man, Milton, to be sure; Milton against the field! Yet if a writer of the present day should contrast his numbers exactly upon Milton's plan, not one in fifty of these professed admirers of Milton, would endure him. The case standing thus, what is to be done? An author must either be contented to give disgust to the generality, or he must humour them by sinning against his own judgment. This latter course, so far as elisions are concerned, I have adopted as essential to my success. In every other respect I give as much variety in my measure as I can, I believe I may say as in ten syllables it is possible to give, shifting perpetually the pause and cadence, and account

ing myself happy that modern refinement has not yet enacted laws against this also. If it had I protest to you I would have dropped my design of translating Homer entirely; and with what an indignant stateliness of reluctance I make them the concession that I have mentioned, Mrs. Unwin can witness, who hears all my complaints upon the subject.

After having lived twenty years at Olney, we are on the point of leaving it, but shall not migrate far. We have taken a house in the village of Weston. Lady Hesketh is our good angel, by whose aid we are enabled to pass into a better air, and a more walkable country. The imprisonment that we have suffered here for so many winters, has hurt us both. That we may suffer it no longer, she stoops to Olney, lifts us from our swamp, and sets us down on the elevated grounds of Weston Underwood. There, my dear friend, I shall be happy to see you, and to thank you person for all your kindness.

in

I do not wonder at the judgment that you form of a foreigner; but you may assure yourself that, foreigner as he is, he has an exquisite taste in English verse. The man is all fire, and an enthusiast in the highest degree, on the subject of Homer, and

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has given me more than once a jog when I have been

inclined to nap with my author.

No cold water is

to be feared from him that might abate my own fire,

rather perhaps too much combustible.

You have not heard, I suppose,

that the ninth book of my translation is at the bottom of the Thames. But it is even so. A storm overtook it in its way to Kingston, and it sunk, together with the whole cargo of the boat in which it was a passenger. Not figuratively foreshowing, I hope, by its submersion, the fate of all the rest. My kind and generous Cousin, who leaves nothing undone, that she thinks can conduce to my comfort, encouragement, or convenience, is my transcriber also.

She wrote the copy, and she will have to write it again-Hers, therefore, is the damage. I have a thousand reasons to lament that the time approaches when we must lose her. She has made a winterly summer a most delightful one, but the winter itself we must spend without her.

LETTER XIV.

W. C.

To the Revd. WALTER BAGOT.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Weston Underwood, Nov. 17, 1786.

There are some things that

do not actually shorten the life of man, yet seem to do so, and frequent removals from place to place are of that number. For my own part at least I am apt to think if I had been more stationary, I should seem to myself to have lived longer. My many changes of habitation have divided my time into many short

periods, and when I look back upon them they appear only as the stages in a day's journey, the first of which is at no very great distance from the last.: I lived longer at Olney than any where. There indeed I lived till mouldering walls and a tottering house warned me to depart. I have accordingly taken the hint, and two days since arrived, or rather took up my abode at Weston. You perhaps have never made the experiment, but I can assure you that the confusion which attends a transmigration of this kind is infinite, and has a terrible effect in deranging the intellects. I have been obliged to renounce my Homer on the occasion, and though not for many days, I yet feel as if study and meditation so long my confirmed habits, were on a sudden become impracticable, and that I shall certainly find them so when I attempt them again. But in a scene so much quieter and pleasanter than that which I have just escaped from, in a house so much more commodious, and with furniture about me so much more to my taste, I shall hope to recover my literary tendency again, when once the bustle of the occasion shall have subsided.

How glad I should be to receive you under a