plaud their cultivation, is at least my happiness, if it is not allowed to be my praise. Your making these propensities of mine an insuperable bar to a communication of my letters to any of your friends, is surely a needless scruple. If this is not false modesty, the frank permission I often give my companions of perusing ingenious letters addressed to myself, though sprinkled over with the hyperboles of partiality, must strike them as a proof of vanity. But, in truth, if the readers of such letters see clearer on the subject of my talents and disposition than the writers, I conclude they observe, with Stella, on her being shewn Swift's beautiful poem, Cadenus and Vanessa, that "a man of genius may write finely on a broom-stick."

However, your reserve about my letters is, perhaps, in my favour, though the sensibility which produces it may be superfluous, since my letters, like my verses, are not much calculated to please the popular taste.

you

I admit, in a great degree, the justice of all say on the subject of my paraphrastic odes from Horace. If I had ever entertained the idea of translating or paraphrasing the lyric compositions of that very agreeable poet regularly, I should have probably renounced it after having read your

last letter; but I had no such intention; yet, as I find it very amusing to give an English dress to a few of the most beautiful, while my hair is dressing, and as the attempt has greatly pleased some of my learned friends-since they flatter me with having caught the spirit, while I departed from the letter of the poet, I have ventured to send one for every month since this year commenced, to the Gentleman's Magazine, and perhaps may continue that tribute till it expires.

Mr Hayley calls these same little odes of mine beautiful. His partial regard for me may render his praise too vivid for their merit; but that praise cannot be bestowed, with any degree of truth, upon the entire translations of the Horaceodes which the scholars have given. That it cannot, affords proof to me that they will not bear a literal or even close translation, without losing. their fire and their grace.

If I have rendered a few of them interesting to even but one genuine disciple of the muses, my trifling, for I cannot call it labour, has not been in vain. Over the lyre of Horace I throw an unfettered, perhaps a presumptuous, hand.

That you have not read the Clarissa does not much excite my wonder. I know the aversion which most sensible people have to novels; and those who, like you, live much in the world, are

deterred by the idea of eight volumes closely written. It is but of late years that this work has been considered as amongst the English classics. I thank you for promising to read it with attention. Nothing is more agreeable to me than the consciousness of having opened new sources of rational delight to those whom I esteem.

You tell me that Mrs Repton reads to you in an evening while you draw. I envy you the Julian faculty of dividing your attention without breaking it into useless fragments.

If it was early instead of late in my large sheet, I should speak to you of the publications which have attracted attention since I wrote to you last. Mr Boswell's entertaining Tour with the growling philosopher, over the desert Hebrides, which, through the fidelity of the describer, enables us to discern most distinctly the colloquial brightness of that luminary, and also its dark and turbid spots;-Those pharisaic meditations, with their popish prayers for old Tetty's soul; their contrite parade about lying in bed on a morning; drinking creamed tea on a fast-day; snoring at sermons, and having omitted to ponder well Bel and the Dragon, and Tobit and his Dog :-Cowper's Task, which the generous reader of poetic susceptibility at once censures and adores: O! that such a master of the metaphoric, the allusive,

the scenic, and the pathetic graces, should so often lay them aside to whip the follies of the age with an iron-rod, sometimes mistaking good for evil propensities, as when he satirizes the amiable warmth of encomium upon the talents it reveres ! The Essay on Old Maids; certainly the production of that pen, whose genius, wit, and learning, throws most of its literary rivals at immeasurable distance. This whimsical work, richly illuminated by all those emanations, so lightly, so wantonly betrays the cause it affects to defend, that I could wish it had never passed the press. My heart rejoices that this severe winter has passed its gloomy zenith; trembling as I do for the effect of its keen blasts upon my aged nursling. Adieu.

LETTER XXVII.

JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

Lichfield, March 25,

"No, Sir," there are not any lees-the spirit.

of your Tour with Johnson runs clear to the last

syllable. Those who are not interested in its anecdotes, can have little intellectual curiosity and no imagination. Those who are not entertained with the perpetual triumph of sarcastic wit over fair ingenuous argument, must be sturdier moralists than even Johnson himself affected to have been; and those who do not love the biographer, as they read, whatever imperfection they may find in the massive Being whom he so strongly characterizes, can have no hearts.

I confess, however, that it was not without some surprise that I perceived so much exultation avowed concerning the noble blood which flows in your veins; since it is more honourable for a man of distinguished ingenuity to have been obscurely than splendidly descended; because then his distinctions are more exclusively his own. Often, as well you are aware, have nobles, princes, ́perhaps kings, stood awed in the presence of the son of a Lichfield bookseller. Can the recorder of his life and actions think birth of consequence? Mr Boswell is too humble in fancying he can derive honour from noble ancestry. It is for the line of Bruce to be proud of the historian of Corsica-it is for the House of Auchinlec to boast of him who, with the most fervent personal attachment to an illustrious literary character, has yet been sufficiently faithful to the just claims of the