Page images
PDF
EPUB

paper, and enters the lists against more than one Zoilus.

Adio!

LETTER LXXVII.

MRS KNOWLES.

Lichfield, Oct. 29, 1787.

THE intelligencer of former times, Captain Wolesley, has been here, after having, during very many years, ceased to exhibit himself in this place, with his meaning smile, and nod of confirmation, which gives rumour so much the air of truth. He told me of marriage-vestments preparing for you; announced Bath the scene where the warp and woof of your bridal-sheets were casting; that a man of large fortune had set the Lady Destinies at work, who was en train to renounce the great * Diana of Ephesus for the Mary of the Meeting-House.

* Mrs Knowles, who is a Quaker, used to give that term to our Established Church.-S.

The moment she heard of your widowhood, shrewd Mrs Cobb pronounced you a bank-bill, whom any man would accept at sight. Ah me! heart smites me that I should write thus sportively of a situation, in which you are placed by an event which has cost me many sighs, and which I shall always regret.

my

Your letter from Buxton, so all yourself in wit and spirit, made me hope and look from day to day, to see you here in your road to town. Its pictures of Buxton have science in them to delight a philosophic amateur, and grotesque original humour to divert the merest John Bull, if there should be an atom of risibility in his composition.

I told you of the groundless idea taken up in this place about your being left in narrow circumstances, solely to obtain your own authority for contradicting it, and without a shadow of apprehension that it had any basis. I, who had been a witness, during some weeks, at different times, to Dr Knowles's immense practice; who also knew that nothing resembling luxury or unnecessary expence prevailed in your family; I, to whom he had mentioned having realised ten thousand pounds in the year 1783, could not but be assured, you had a much larger income left you than you ever would expend.

Mr Sneyd said a great deal to me of magnetism, but treated it as an artful imposition, marvelling much how it could obtain a moment's credit with you; yet he expressed a wish that I should obtain from yourself the grounds of your belief. To make me hold my opinions in suspense upon the experiments, it was sufficient that they had the sanction of your trust and confidence, whatever air of wild improbability they

wore.

I always considered General Elliot's defence of Gibraltar as a truly great, patriotic, and heroic action; that it restored a large portion of our credit in the eyes of Europe, sullied, and indeed almost annihilated by the deep disgrace of an unjust, a foolish, direfully expensive, long, and disastrous war; that, by this action alone, we were enabled to make a creditable peace, and, in some degree, regain our prosperity as a nation. Military victories, in general, are by no means the darling themes of my muse; but, with these ideas, it was impossible I could think that of the Gibraltar defence any way inimical to morality.

Adieu!

LETTER LXXVIII.

GEORGE HARDINGE, ESQ.

[ocr errors]

Lichfield, Nov. 11, 1787.

SEDUCER!-thou hast made me what I thought to have left the world without having ever beenin love with a Lord. His last letter, which you inclosed, concerning his opinion on capital punishments, has fairly done the business; and I had rather be honoured with Lord Camelford's amity, than with the marked attention and avowed esteem of most other of the titled sons of our land.

Lord C.'s wit, his ease, and those descriptive powers, which bring scenery to the eye with the precision of the pencil, had previously delighted me; but with the heart, sweetly shining out in his last epistle, I am so intemperately charmed, that his idea often fills my eyes with those delicious tears, which, beneath the contemplation of virtues, that emulate what we conceive of Deity, instantaneous spring to the lids, without falling from them; tears, which are at once prompted,

and exhaled by pleasurable sensations. Suffer me to detain, yet a little longer, these scriptures of genius and of mercy.

And now for a little picking at our everlasting bone of contention. Hopless love is apt to make folk cross; so you must expect me to snarl a little.

I am not to learn that there is a large mass of bad writing in Shakespeare; of stiff, odd, affected phrases, and words, which somewhat disgrace him, and would ten times more disgrace a modern writer, who has not his excuses to plead. All I contend for, and it is a point on which I have the suffrage of most ingenious men, that his best language, being more copious, easy, glowing, bold, and nervous, than that of perhaps any other writer, is the best model of poetic language to this hour, and will remain so "to the last syllable of recorded time;" that his bold licences, when we feel that they are happy, ought to be adopted by other writers, and thus become established privileges; and that present and future English poets, if they know their own interest, will, by using his phraseology, prevent its ever becoming obselete.

Amid the hurry in which I wrote last, my thankless pen made no comment upon the wel

« PreviousContinue »