as well as of harmonic beauty. I from every pain and every danger, should observe, that the Rev. Mr. because his sufferings gave me miseBenjamin Mence, once of St. Paul's ry, and the thoughts of losing him and the King's Chapel, was equally anguish.

great in his expression of solemn And thus did strong affection leave music; but from the harmonic world nothing to be performed by the sense that sun has long withdrawn its of duty. I hope it would have probeams. From Mr. Mence Mr. Sa- duced the same attentions on my ville first caught his energies, or ra- part; but I am not entitled to say ther, by his example, obtained cou- that it would, or to accept of comrage to express them. Mr. Harrison mendation for tenderness so invohas great correctness and delicacy, luntary.

and some pathos; but he has no It gives me pleasure that your prosenergy, and without energy, Han-pects are so bright. A liberal and del can have no justice from his per- extended commerce may be as faformer. vourable to the expansion of superi

Colonel Barry lately appeared or abilities, as any other profession; amongst us, but instantly fleeted and it is certainly a much more away. I was delighted to perceive, cheerful employment than that of that he had exchanged the languor medicine. The humane physician of indisposition for the sprightliness must have his quiet perpetually inof health. Adieu!

LETTER XCVI.

vaded by the sorrows of those who look anxiously up to him for relief, which no human art can, perhaps, administer.

I have uniformly beheld, with re

Anna Seward to Thomas Christie, verence and delight, the efforts of

Esq.

France to throw off the iron yoke of her slavery; not the less oppresJuly 1, 1790. sive for having been bound with riYES, my kind friend, Heaven has bands and lilies. Ill betide the deat length deprived me of that dear generate English heart, that does parent, to whom I was ever most ten- not wish her prosperity.

derly attached, and whose infirmi- You ask me after Mrs. Cowley. ties, exciting my hourly pity, increas- I have not the pleasure of her aced the pangs of final separation. It quaintance, but am familiar with her was in vain that my reason reproach- ingenious writings. This age has ed the selfishness of my sorrow. produced few better comedies than I cannot receive, as my due, the hers.

praise you so lavish upon my filial You are very good to wish to see attentions. Too passionate was my me in London: but I have no near affection to have had any merit in view of going thither. You will be devoting myself to its duties. All sorry to hear that I have lost my was irresistible impulse. I made health, and am oppressed with sympno sacrifices, for pleasure lost its na- toms of an hereditary and dangerous ture and its name, when I was ab- disease.

sent from him. I studied his ease Litchfield has been my home since and comfort, because I delighted to I was seven years old-this house see him cheerful; and, when every since I was thirteen; for I am still energy of spirit was sunk in languor, in the palace, and do not think of to see him tranquil. It was my as- moving at present. It is certainly siduous endeavour to guard him much too large for my wants, and

for my income; yet is my attach- combination, supported by the ample ment so strong to the scene, that I resources of a various, mature, and am tempted to try, if I recover, what complete language, to elevate, polish, strict economy, in other respects, will and give the last perfection to the do towards enabling me to remain rudiments of poetry, first so coarse in a mansion, endeared to me as the and abortive, afterwards so quaint, tablet on which the pleasures of my and so shredded out into wearisome youth are impressed, and the image redundance. of those that are everlastingly absent. Adieu. Yours.

LETTER XCVII.

Anna Seward to Mrs. Stokes.

That work of ever-new poetic information and instruction, T. Warton's Critical Notes to Milton's Lesser Poems, will show you how very largely Milton took, not only from the classics, but from his verse-predecessors in our own language; from Burton's writings, interlarded with Litchfield, July 31, 1796. verse; from Drayton; from SpenI HAVE not seen Wakefield's ob- ser; from Shakspeare; from the two servations on Pope. They may, as Fletchers, and from Drummond. you tell me they are, be very ingeni- The entire plan, and almost all the ous; but as to plagiarism, Pope outlines of the sweet pictures in would lose little in my esteem from L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, are in Burwhatever of that may be proved ton's Anatomie of Melancholy, or a against him; since it is allowed, that Dialogue between Pleasure and Pain, he always rises above his clumsy mo- in verse, with a passage of his in dels, in their tinsel drapery. prose; and these were taken and Poetry, being the natural product combined in Milton's imagination, of a highly-gifted mind, however un-with the fine hints in a song in cultivated, must exist, in a rude form Beaumont and Fletcher's play, The at least, from the instant that the Nice Valour, or Passionate Madman. social compact gives to man a su- In Comus, Milton was much inperplus of time from that which is debted to Fletcher's beautiful pastoral employed in providing for his natu- play, The Faithful Shepherdess; but ral wants, together with liberation Milton and Pope, though with excelfrom that anxiety about obtaining lence different both in nature and such provision, which is generally degree, were arch-chymists, and turnincompatible with those abstracted ed the lead and tinsel of others to the ideas from which poetry results. As purest and finest gold.

this leisure, and freedom to thought, Dr. Stokes is mistaken in supposarises with the progress of subordi- ing Milton my first poetic favourite nation and inequality of rank, men -great as I deem him, the superior become poets, and this long before of Virgil, and the equal of Homer, their language attains its copiousness my heart and imagination acknowand elegance. ledge yet greater the matchless bard

The writers of such periods, there- of Avon. fore, present poetic ideas in coarse I thank you for the discriminating and shapeless ingenuity. In the un- observations in your letter of April skilled attempt to refine them, they the 24th, upon my late publication. become, in the next stage of the pro- Milton says, that from Adam's lip, gress, an odd mixture of quaintness not words alone pleased Eve; so and simplicity but it is reserved for may I say, that from your pen praise genius, learning, and judgment in alone would not satisfy my avidity

of pleasing you. The why and where-ther place is its application affected. fore you are pleased, which is always I am allowed to be patient of critiso ingenious when you write of verse, cism, and trust no one is readier to form the zest, which makes encomi- feel its force, and, when just, to acum nectar. Mr Haley's letter to me knowledge and to profit by it; but on the subject is very gratifying: it to a censor, who does not know the joins, to a generous ardency of praise, meaning of the word thrill, I may, the elegance, spirit, and affection of without vanity, exclaim,

his former epistles.

"Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests!"

Her

Ah! yes, it is very certain, that not only some, but all our finest po- Have you seen Mrs. Inchbald's ets, frequently invert the position of late work, Nature and Art. She is the verb, and prove that the British a favourite novelist with me. Critic, who says it is not the habit late work has improbable situations, of good writers, is a stranger to and is inferior to her Simple Story, their compositions. When Thomson which ought to have been the title says,

"Vanish the woods, the dim-seen river seems Sullen and slow to roll his misty train,"

it is picture; which it would not have been, if he had coldly written,

"The woods are vanished;"

of this composition, to which it is better suited than to the history of Dorriforth: yet we find in Art and Nature the characteristic force of her pen, which, with an air of undesigning simplicity, places in a strong point of view the worthlessness of such characters as pass with the She seems

spe

since, in the former, by the prece- world for respectable. dence of the verb to the noun, we to remove, as by accident, their see the fog in the very act of shroud- cious veil, and without commenting ing the woods; but to these consti- upon its removal: and certain strokes tuent excellencies of poetry, the eye of blended pathos and horror indeliof a reviewer is the mole's dim cur- bly impress the recollection.

tain.

Again, in the same poem, Au- But, with yet greater powers than tumn, this inversion is beautifully Mrs. Inchbald's, does the author of used, while its author is paying, in a Caleb Williams grapple our attensimile, the finest compliment imagi- tion. I conceive that he said to nable to the talents and excursive himself, "I will write a book, that spirit of his countrymen :—

"As from their own clear north, in radiant

streams,

Bright over Europe bursts the Boreal morn."

And what spirit does Pope often give his lines, by using this inversion in the imperative mood:

shall have no prototype, yet the taste of the age for the marvellous shall be humoured. Female pens have given us ruined castles, tolling bells, lights that palely gleaming make darkness visible, whispering voices from viewless forms and beckoning shadows: that ground is preoccupied. Let me try if I cannot harrow readers, who have mind, with dread and breathless Then, as to the imputed affectation expectation, without exciting supernaof the word Lyceum, Thomson calls tural ideas, and even without the asthe woods "Nature's vast Lyceum." sistance of enamoured interests." If For his purpose it was necessary to such was his design, the success is elevate the term by its epithet, for complete. Yet has his work many mine to lower it by that which I ap-defects; and we perceive his perplied-minute Lyceum; and in nei- nicious principles to be those of an

“Rise, crown'd with light, imperial Salem, rise!"

absurd and visionary anarchist, who still now, has not been sufficiently would open all the prison doors, elucidated, and rescued by those of and let thieves and murderers walk your country from the imputed guilt at large, in the hope of philosophiz- of unprovoked depredation on the ing them into virtue. part of the Scots.

I learn with regret, that Mr. Ma- The old border ballads of your first son is going to print a new work of volume are so far interesting as they his by a private press, for his friends corroborate your historic essays; so only. This resolve, doubtless, re- far valuable as that they form the basulted from disgust to the idea of sis of them. Poetically considered, seeing his compositions subject to little surely is their worth; and I the ignorance and effrontery of Re- must think it more to the credit of view-impertinence, which assumes Mrs. Brown's memory than of her the right of supposing, that its fabri- taste, that she could take pains to cators understand verse-making bet- commit to remembrance, and to reter than the first poets of our age-tain there, such a quantity of uncouth even than he,

"Whom on old Humber's bank the Muses bore, And nurs'd his youth along the marshy shore."

LETTER XCVIII.

rhymes, almost totally destitute of all which gives metre a right to the name of poetry.

Poetry is like personal beauty; the homeliest and roughest language cannot conceal the first, any more than coarse and mean apparel the second. But grovelling colloquial phrase, in

Anna Seward to Walter Scott, Esq. numbers inharmonious; verse that gives no picture to the reader's eye, Litchfield, April 29, 1802. no light to his understanding, no

ACCEPT my warmest thanks for magnet to his affections, is, as comthe so far overpaying bounty of your position, no more deserving his praise, literary present.* In speaking of than coarse forms and features in a its contents I shall demonstrate, that beggar's raiment are worth his atmy sincerity may be trusted, what- tention. Yet are there critics who ever cause I may give you to distrust seem to mistake the squalid dress my judgment. In saying that you of language for poetic excellence, dare not hope your works will enter-provided the verse and its mean garb tain me, you evince the existence of be ancient.

a deep preconceived distrust of the Of that number seems Mr. Pinkerlatter faculty in my mind. That dis- ton, in some of his notes to those old trust is not, I flatter myself, entirely Scottish ballads which he published founded, at least if I may so gather in 1781; and the late Mr. Headly from the delight with which I peruse more than so seems in that collecall that is yours, whether prose or tion of ancient English ballads, which verse, in these volumes. he soon after gave to the press. We Your dissertations place us in find there an idiot preference of the Scotland, in the midst of the feudal rude, and, in itself, valueless, founperiod. They throw the strongest dation on which Prior raised one of light on a part of history indistinctly the loveliest poetic edifices in our sketched, and partially mentioned by language, the Henry and Emma. the English historians, and which, With equal insolence and stupidity, Mr. Headly terms it "Matt's versifi* Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, consist-cation Piece," extolling the imputed ing of historical and romantic ballads, collected by Walter Scott, Esq.-S. superiority of the worthless model.

the head of Antinous.

It is preferring a barber's block to cy was requisite; but still they are picture, and, as such, poetry. Mr. Pinkerton, in his note to the Lord Maxwell's Good Night is but eldest Flowers of the Forest, calls it, a sort of inventory in rhyme of his very justly, an exquisite poetic dirge; property, interspersed with some porbut, unfortunately for his decisions tion of tenderness for his wife, and in praise of ancient above modern some expressions of regard for his Scottish verse, he adds, "The inimi- friends; but the first has no picture, table beauty of the original induced and the latter little pathos. That a variety of versifiers to mingle stan-ballad induced me, by what appearzas of their own composition; but it ed its deficiencies, to attempt a is the painful, though necessary duty somewhat more poetic leave-taking of an editor, by the touchstone of of house, land, and live-stock. My truth, to discriminate such dross ballad does not attempt the pathetic, from the gold of antiquity;" and, in and you will smile at my glossary the note to that pathetic and truly Scotch. beautiful elegy, Lady Bothwell's La- Mr. Erskine's supplemental stanment, he says the four stanzas he zas to the poem, asserted to have has given appear to be all that are been written by Collins, on the Highgenuine. It has since, as you ob- land superstitions, have great merit, serve, been proved, that both the and no inferiority to those whose Flodden Dirges, even as he has given manner they assume.

them, are modern. Their beauty In the border ballads, the first was a touchstone, as he expresses it, strong rays from the Delphic orb ilwhich might have shown their young-luminate Jellom Grame, in the 4th, er birth to any critic, whose taste 16th, 17th, 18th, and 20th stanzas. had not received the broad impres- There is a good corpse-picture in sion of that torpedo, antiquarianism. Clerk Saunders, the rude original, as You, with all your strength, origi- you observe, of a ballad in Percy, nality, and richness of imagination, which I have thought furnished Burhad a slight touch of that torpedo, ger with the hint for his Leonore. when you observed, that the manner How little delicate touches have imof the ancient minstrels is so happily proved this verse in Percy's imitaimitated in the first Flowers of the tion! Forest, that it required the strongest positive evidence to convince you that the song was of modern date. The phraseology, indeed, is of their texture; but, comparing it with the And now, in these border ballads, border ballads, in your first volume, the dawn of poesy, which broke over I should have pronounced it modern, Jellom Grame, strengthens on its from its so much more touching progress. Lord Thomas and fair regrets, so much more lively pic-Annie has more beauty than Percy's ballad of that title. It seems injudiPermit me, too, to confess, that I ciously altered from this in your colcan discover very little of all which lection; but the Binnorie, of endless constitutes poetry in the first old tale, repetition, has nothing truly pathewhich you call beautiful, excepting tic; and the ludicrous use made of the second stanza, which gives the the drowned sister's body, by the unicorns at the gate, and the por

tures.

"O! if I come within thy bower
I am no mortal man!
And if I kiss thy rosy lip
Thy days will not be long."

traits, "with holly aboon their brie.” *This stanza has no rhymes, but we do not To give them, no great reach of fan-miss them, so harmonious is the metre.-S.