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bole, requires impassioned situations to preserve it from producing coldness in the style by the very attempt to give it warmth."

But if I were to descant upon all the critical notes to this work which are signed T., and which have pleased and instructed me, my letter, already. too long, would be voluminous indeed. The path in which I dissent from you has a very limited extent, though its opposition is total.-It is on the subject of Sterne. I throw down my warder, but, if you please, the day of combat shall be a little time hence; til when, repose upon your laurels !

LETTER LXXX.

GEORGE HARDINGE, ESQ.

Lichfield, Nov. 21, 1787.

YOUR epigram from Martial is elegant; yet, I confess, the idea seems to me not expressed with sufficient clearness; if indeed it is meant that not duration, but a certain character in friendship proves it genuine,

In the year 1785, I wrote a poem, addressed to Mr Whalley, then on the Continent. It contains the same thought. I knew not that it had been expressed by Martial. Mr Whalley had passed a long and severe winter in Chambery, induced by a friendship which he had formed at Dijon with an amiable Savoyard nobleman, the Baron de Chatilion. The second of the following stanzas you will find expressing the idea in question:

What marvel, Whalley, that a soul like thine,

Shou'd brave the bitter storms, that ceaseless howl Where winter shivers on his rocky shrine,

With nitrous breath, and petrifying scowl!

What marvel, drawn by that magnetic power
Which soul to soul so instantly endears,
Investing friendship's young and blossoming hour,
With all the ripeness of experienc'd years.

I devoured Lord Camelford's* description of Vaucluse. My friend, Mr Whalley, visited it twice, exploring, with the most eager curiosity, every feature of the scene. His description of it, after the first visit, made earlier in the summer, before the snows were melted, tallies very exact

* See a Letter to Mr Whalley dated December 20th 1787.

ly with his Lordship's; though it is curious that each concludes his description with an observation totally opposite. Mr Whalley says, that the wild, romantic, and mountainous seclusion of the scene, is peculiarly suited to sooth, by indulgence, the melancholy of hopeless love, and induce it to give poetic colouring to its sorrows. Lord Camelford, you know, observes, that the whole of the scene is majestic and imposing; but not such as he should think likely to feed the love-sick mind, or the soft images of enamoured poetry.

We cannot doubt, from Petrarch's perpetual mention of the Vaucluse laurels, that they did luxuriantly ornament the valley when he passed so much time in its recesses, though no vestige of them now remains. The scene must have appeared more beautiful and soothing when graced by their soft umbrage. Behold Mr Whalley's de-, lineation of this celebrated vale, after his second visit, in the summer 1785:

"I have paid another visit to the enchanting fountain; and what a change! There had been a great thaw and heavy rain a few days before;and its azure waters, that, ere-while, slept in their rocky cavern, were now risen above its brim, and were rushing, with lavish violence, over the shelving mound of mossy crags, which time had thrown from the overhanging rocks. With repeated,

foaming, and loud cascades, they augmented the Sorgue, which was now become a considerable river.

"Did I mention, in my first hasty sketch, the lonely graces of the little winding valley, which leads to the bold scenery of rocks immediately about the fountain? The chief umbrage of the vale bends over the Sorgue, and is formed of the willow and the mulberry tree. I remember observing, that the solitary and melancholy appearance of the whole scene seems formed to sooth the sorrows of despairing love.

"On our return from the fountain, the steeple, the curate's house and garden, stand grouped to the eye in the most picturesque manner imaginable and, in the latter, two ancient and venerable cypresses stand side by side, as if mourning over the ashes of Petrarch and Laura, and as emblems of their ever-verdant memories. They are the only large trees to be discerned, and we find them exquisitely in keeping with our ideas amidst a scene so consecrated.

"On the summit of the left-hand heights of Vaucluse, stand the remains of what is called Petrarch's Castle, though I believe it is ascertained that it never belonged to him; that his was an humbler roof, situated in a more rural spot, and more consonant to his situation and his taste.

"At the end of the village, I was glad to find this ruin not so inaccessible as Mr Wraxal thought; though it cost me many a difficult and wearying step to reach and explore it; but I was repaid by noble views of the country, far and near, and especially by those of the valley, the river Sorgue, and the village, which I caught, in the manner that painters love, through the ivied arches of the

rocks.

"On the high ground, on the other side, stands, haughtily, in a barren wild, the Chateau de Som mane, where Laura once dwelt, and which yet belongs to some of her direct descendents. It was lately inhabited by the ingenious and learned Abbé de Sade. Some years since, he published a voluminous history of Petrarch and Laura, of which Mrs Dobson's is a mere abridgment. I have just read it, and found it satisfactory and entertaining, though often too prolix; and though his translations prove him no poet, nor always an accurate master of his author's sense, he has put it beyond all doubt, that his ancestress was the Laura of Petrarch."

So far Mr Whalley. In the poem mentioned in the beginning of this letter, I attempted a poetical landscape of Vaucluse. It may perhaps one day see the light.

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