Volume 1 — EXTRACTS FROM MISS SEWARD’S LITERARY CORRESPONDENCE.

Lichfield, Oct. 1762.

There is surely, my dear friend, a certain magnetism which attracts dispositions to those which resemble them, and, in some sort, supplies the place of long experienced good qualities. Let us recollect our first conversations with people whose age and situation in life had parity with ours. It is, perhaps, not often that any of them shall be found to have passed in absolute indifference, though the degree of attraction or repulsion in each might be widely different.

I am strongly tempted to rely upon this involuntary bias. Young as I am, my experience must be very limited; but hitherto I have not often found these first-sight impressions deceive me. On the contrary, the disappointments I have met with in my friendships generally resulted from people with whom circumstances of mutual convenience had united me in a slow progressive regard, which had gradually subdued the force of primary impressions that were not in their favour.

Yet I must not permit you to suppose that my youthful, perhaps enthusiastic credulity, extends so far as to adopt the idea, either in friendship or love, of the one only kindred spirit destined to subdue our hearts, if of the other sex, or to engross our whole stock of amity, if of our own; but I do religiously believe that Nature, or rather the God of Nature, has formed the human mind into different classes, and that there can be no enduring happiness in any connection for dispositions which are not of the same order of mind.

In love, the impermanent pleasures of the eye eternally mislead uncongenial spirits into bands which are legally indissoluble. Hence that matrimonial infelicity which we often see exist between persons, neither of whom are unamiable; where each, in a better-suited connection, might have found that comfort which they lost, by not attending to the dissimilarity of their tastes and pursuits; a dissimilarity which ought to have shewn them the impossibility of finding it in each other’s society, and have restrained them from wandering out of their own class.

Friendship, less influenced than love by the intoxication of the eye, is less apt to lead the soul out of her bounds; yet sometimes, in the choice of friends, even thinking minds are dazzled by the glitter of superficial attractions, and caught by the fascination of a smile; and oftener still, as I before observed, circumstances of convenience, consciousness of obligation, or reverence for imputed virtues, shall over-rule the want of native sympathy in the formation of friendship.

Such friendship, however, is mighty apt to be suddenly dissolved. Their acquaintance wonder, and the parties themselves wonder at the ease with which they had mutually renounced communication, that, from its frequency, might well be supposed to have been important to their happiness. But, in reality, there is little marvel in the matter. Friendship not having, like marriage, a legal indissolubility, the connection which convenience or accident had formed, we are not to wonder if convenience or accident dissolves.

Still less ought we to wonder that attachments quickly vanish which were founded upon the airy nothings of superficial attractions. They are, indeed, but as “the baseless fabric of a vision.” Yet it were well, if, like a vision, they left no wreck behind.—Alas! they are too apt to leave wrecks, most properly so called, which shall prove, through life, the long-repented folly of ill-placed confidence.

And now, dear Emma, are you not ready to ask your friend wherefore she moralizes thus sententiously, at an age when it is more natural, perhaps more pleasing, to feel lively impressions, than to annalyze them? There is a wherefore. I have been called romantic. It is my wish that you should better know the heart in which you possess so lively an interest.

My sensibilities are poignant;—my credulity has all the warmth of youthful ingenuousness; but, in truth, the romance of your friend’s disposition did not survive her last robe-coat above a couple of years.

That fervent inclination, which, in our first interview, seemed to attach us mutually, has, I flatter myself, a very different foundation from the giddy violence of novel-reading misses, who plight their first-sight friendships with solemn earnestness, because they think it pretty and becoming to have plighted friendships, and because their vanity pants to impart the conquests of the preceding ball. Such nymphs should have this motto on their samplers:

I can recollect, ah! it is not such an age ago, when I protested friendship a little in this style; when my pleased heart swelled with conscious importance at the idea of exciting tender sighs and penseroso glances at fourteen, and longed to disclose the triumph.

Though this was in my sallad days, as Cleopatra says, “when I was green in judgement,” yet, believe me, I still blush for that solemn farce of professed confidence which introduced the disclosure of the mighty secret.

Our minds have, I trust, more lasting bands of union. They are, shall I not venture to say, amiable, generous, and sincere; and, what will secure duration to these bands of the same class? Amity towards each other descends to us by inheritance; our mothers passed the halcyon days of youth together. Loveliness was around them as a light, and envy never made than shrink from the lustre of each other’s graces. They said, when last they met, a little before the death of your excellent parent, “our children will love each other.” Shall they be mistaken? My heart says no! and I dare trust the kind response of yours.

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P.S. You talked of reading the New Eloisa; throw it aside, I beseech you.

Lichfield, Oct. 1762.

My dear Emma acknowledges, that, in her eyes, Capt. L—— is something more than handsome;—that he has interested her attentions; yet she hopes this impression will never amount to love, because she fears he is fickle and libertine, practised also in the wiles of pretended attachment. She even acknowledges that, were she convinced of the reality of his affection, and the purity of his morals, she should yet fear that his mind is not of the congenial class.

Ah! then, let us beg of Fate to nip this passion in the bud; for passion, I am afraid, it already is. O! the dangerous influence of the eye! Justly does Clarissa exclaim, “Wicked, wicked misleader!”

You ask me, if I expected implicit obedience when I bade you throw aside Eloisa. I cannot say I did, but I meant to hint my opinion of its very softening tendency.

It is a book which all young men should read, and the young women avoid, except they have been educated in the flutter of high life. The Lady Harriots of the age, of whom that excellent poem in Dodsley, “The Modern Fine Lady,” is so exact a portrait, might perhaps do well to soften their vain and selfish hearts, by the impassioned and beautiful pages of the Eloisa; since love, in its most enthusiastic excess, has no hazard to principle and to happiness so desperate as pride; boundless dissipation and unprincipled extravagance being in their train.

I said also, that I thought our young men should read Eloisa, and these are my reasons. Among the modern youth, satiric contempt of tender attachment has succeeded to the enamoured Quixotism of former times. With that sex, since chastity, unfortunately for it, is not the point of honour, no guard can be substituted for masculine purity, so likely to preserve it from the fatal effects of debauched habits, as a fervent and constant passion for a refined and amiable woman. But love has no foe so formidable as ridicule; and the natural passions are, in general, found to be less potent than the artificial ones, if the latter are inspired and hallowed by fashion. As an antidote to the bane of her satire, I would present to our male youth the Eloisa of Rousseau.

When that same arbitrary, though fickle power, gave her sanction to enamoured Constancy, it was better for the morality and for the happiness of both sexes; but now, that she shrinks from the bosom of our young men, blighted by the dread laugh of fashionable circles, what is the consequence? Nature may be perverted, but she cannot be subdued. Constitutional fervour, so much stronger in that sex than in ours, snatches at casual and indiscriminate gratification.

Habits of sensuality once established, the heart becomes cold and impenetrable amidst the indelicate indulgence of the senses, and loses all power of sympathizing truly and equally, with the genuine and joy-bestowing tenderness of uncorrupted sensibility. The libertine is not aware how much of real voluptuousness his libertinism costs him.

Were I a parent, I would infinitely rather that my son’s talents were buried in obscurity with a breeding wife and a scanty fortune, dead to wealth and fame, but alive, in every nerve, to domestic comfort and affection, than see him in an elegant drawing-room, yawning under the ennui of exhausted pleasures, and in the (at best to him) insipid society of a rich wife, whose (perhaps) amiable qualities not having previously seized his heart, and warmed his imagination, want power to inspirit his attention or awaken his tenderness.

Such lethargy is an incurable disease of the soul, and would prove more fatal to his virtue and to his happiness, than all the thorns of care and anxiety with which inauspicious fortune might surround the roses of his youth.

As a preservation from such wretched insensibility, when I have sons, they shall read Eloisa; but, for my daughters, should I have daughters, amidst the pure, the gentle, the affectionate sentiments which their domestic education must necessarily inspire, they will have too much sensibility not to render an increase of it by such means, dangerous to their peace, perhaps to their fame and safety. Without having read the softening Eloisa, they will bring a larger portion of tenderness to the arms of their husband, than they can have a tolerable chance of seeing returned by the modern race of men.

Beneath the impression of these ideas, you will not wonder that I wish this fascinating book had not, at this juncture, fallen into the hands of one of the most affectionate and gentle of her sex, abounding, as it does, with lavish fuel to a kindling attachment.

I knew you would not like the two last volumes so well as the former. If you have finished the fourth, tell me if you do not feel some how disgusted with Clara’s passion? She, who had so long been acquainted with the amiable philosopher!—Confidante to both the lovers!—Herself married in the intervening period! Then, to see the widow’s passion come lagging, like a distanced horse, when the ardent race of love, which St Preaux and the lovely Eloisa had run, was just finished! It appears to me strange and unnatural.

In the sphere of friendship, Clara shone with unclouded light; but an unreciprocal passion for the lover of Eloisa seems not congenial to a turn of mind more sprightly than tender, more reasonable than enamoured; and it sullies the lustre of her exertions to make them happy, while it was probable they might be united, and to save them from themselves, when their separation became necessary.

I see the author’s design, that it was to exalt the constancy of St Preaux; but I think a new object had better have been introduced for that purpose.

We will take our leave, for the present, of these philosophic lovers; but I must not take my leave of you without some notice of the conclusion of your letter, in which you tell me, that you shall expect reciprocal confidence, and proceed to question me about the situation of my own heart.

I meant to have gratified this obliging curiosity in my present letter; but it is already long, and, were I now to resign the pen to egotism, that prating gossip would be likely enough to swell it into voluminous extent. There is no end of the tissues which, Arachne-like, she spins out of her own bowels. A page or two, in my next, may perhaps find room for her cobwebs. Adieu!

Lichfield, Nov. 1762.

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I am glad you approve my reasoning respecting the Eloisa, though you had not resolution to take my advice of throwing it aside; that you agree with me in thinking the study of those tender pages best confined to our male youth, upon whom a little enthusiasm might be of infinite use in checking the fashionable prevalence of Epicurean love.

Estimable and honoured through the ages which have elapsed since his death, has been the character of Petrarch, a young Italian ecclesiastic, and one of the most celebrated poets of that country. He preserved a tender and hopeless passion for the beautiful, the virtuous, the wedded Laura, during 30 years; and, at the expiration of that time, was a sincere mourner for her death, which happened from that dire contagion, the plague, then raging at Avignon. Laura was a native of that city, from whose environs Petrarch could never tear himself after he had, during his visit there, accidentally beheld her, the then too charming bride of a young French nobleman. He often used to retire to a romantic valley in the neighbourhood, to sooth his troubled passions by the composition of his celebrated sonnets, and to render vocal all its echoes.

I am told no ingenious traveller visits Avignon without exploring the Vale of Vaucluse; and, with the thrill of local enthusiasm, tracing up the windings of the crystal Sorgue to their source in that fountain, whose waters, of an immeasurable depth, sleep in a spacious cavern that seems scooped in the rocks, and is overshadowed by their summits.

This fountain, with the surrounding scenery, and the charms of Laura, whose summer residence was in that valley, are immortalized by the beauty of the sonnets, which paint them in all the glow of poetic colouring.

A gentleman danced with me at our last assembly, who had explored this valley, and seemed pleased to see me eagerly listen to his descriptions of its features. He also contrived to give me some idea of those applauded sonnets. I long to see a fine translation[2] of them into our own language.

How I regretted every summons to rejoin the dance with a partner so capable of making the conversational interlude the most agreeable part of the evening’s amusement! He was a stranger, and, though he looked like a gentleman, the graces of countenance and figure were not his; he danced very indifferently, yet, believe me, I would not have exchanged my partner for any of the handsome militaries that made the ball so gay.

While he talked to me of a poet so renowned, so enamoured, and so faithful; of Vaucluse and of Laura, the following apostrophe to Petrarch’s memory, in Lyttleton’s enchanting Monody, rushed upon my spirit, and increased the animation with which I listened:

If Petrarch was not happy, he was illustrious. Fruitless regrets, and tender sorrows, whose indulgence sooths, though it cannot avail, are not misery; and, having a tendency to refine and exalt the spirit above the gross gratifications of indiscriminate connections, are a thousand times more desirable than the pleasures, falsely so called, of a gay dissipated young man of the present age, who laughs at sentiment, and fancies he knows the sex.

Never may the peace of any friend of mine be dependent upon such a being! I am, &c.

Lichfield, Nov. 1762.

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You enquire after our studies. We have been lately engaged in exploring the inestimable treasure which had, during so many ages, lain concealed in the darkness of the Erse language. Macpherson has kindly and ably drawn aside the curtain, and the venerable bards, the mighty heroes, the maids of Caledonia and Ierne, with the spirits of the airy halls, come forward, and, with just and graceful dignity, assert their claims to ancient honours, and to an high station on classic ground.

I find fastidious people affect to question the originality of Ossian; but we have the sanction of Lord Lyttleton’s opinion, with that of other learned men, to abet the force of our conviction that the bold ideas, and sublime imagery of these fragments, are not the composition of modern genius, though it may have drawn out, enlarged, blended, and connected them. There is a daring spirit in this work, resembling that of the sacred writings; a great blaze of imagination, but it is the random fire of the ruder ages.

Stranger, as was the author of these sombre dramas, to the sciences and arts, even to agriculture itself, and therefore excluded from the immense resources which they yield to the poet; yet, by the force of native genius, the grandly simple objects, which an uncultivated, and almost desert country could produce, are found sufficient for the sublimest purposes of illustration, description, and imagery. We must add, however, by the aid of superstition, which supplied the old bard with very fine machinery from the changing form of the clouds, and from the evolutions of the Aurora Borealis.

You see my pen took the whim of concluding in numbers its observations on Ossian’s poetry. And now let the objects of the imagination recede, and the affairs of the heart resume their place on my paper. Those of mine were sufficiently discussed in my last letter.

The business of yours is much more interesting, because it is more full of hazard. I am in the quiet harbour of a probably life-long absence from him to whose pilotism I had resigned my sensibility on the dangerous sea of love; but we kept, as you see, pretty near the coast, and the worst evil I had to encounter, on a voyage which reason must deem a fruitless one, was the pain of absence. Disappointment I could not know, since no illusive Hymeneal hopes had hung out false lights in my brain-built watch-tower. But, for you, I fear the rocks and quicksands of an improsperous and unequal marriage; a marriage of mental inequality, which is the very worst sort.

You start, and repeat what you said in your last, that you do not think there is any strong attachment on either side. He has not yet declared himself your lover; he has “only been attentive, respectful, insinuating!”

Dangerous wretch!—For is he not a libertine? and do we not know, from the destiny and feelings of one dear and amiable friend, from those pensive smiles which so superficially cover an aching heart, how incompetent even the kindness of a libertine husband to the happiness of a woman of delicacy!

A being of this order may temporarily assume that softness of manners, which a very little observation would teach him is necessary to subdue the heart of such a woman as yourself; but he is incapable, after they have obtained their purpose, of preserving this refined respect and engaging tenderness. The habits of his life militate against them, and those will resume all their wounding coarseness in the bosom of security.

If he should treat you, after marriage, with tolerable kindness and good nature, it is the best you have reasonably to expect. What counterpoise, in the scale of happiness, can be formed by that best against the delights you must renounce in the morning of your youth?—the bright prospects of hope, whose animating charm is heightened by uncertainty; and those precious hours from seventeen to twenty-one, which an intelligent young woman will employ in such a cultivation of her talents, as shall accomplish her for a companion to a man of sense and knowledge; for the momentous task of educating her children properly when she becomes a mother, and give her the pleasing power of diffusing the spirit of intellectual refinement wherever she goes, and of providing better resources against the lassitude of declining life, than can be supplied by that annihilator of ideas, the card-table?

My dearest friend, take your resolution in time. Love is seldom to be subdued, except at its first onset; and every hour, by which you prolong your stay within eye-shot of the enemy, renders the victory more doubtful. Justly does Madame d’Enclos observe, that, “in the amorous warfare, the Parthian exercise is the best discipline.”

Determine, therefore, to quit Shrewsbury as soon as possible. London, however, is not the best place of retreat. An attached heart, in the absence of its object, may find that solitude in crowded rooms, and in the whirl of dissipation, which, in quiet though not absolute retirement, the attentions of friendship will, with industrious kindness, preclude; conscious that the solitude of abstracted musing presents fuel to the dangerous fires of hazardous or ineffectual love.

Return to Lichfield to me for the remainder of the winter! We will banish all mention of Mr L——, which is a much better method than abusing him. We will read ingenious authors, who shall rather give our minds new ideas from the stores of science and observation, than increase the susceptibility of our hearts. We will even venture to criticise, as well as admire those authors, since the brightest gem has some sullying vein, and since the sun itself has its spots.

The little Honora, who recites with the most perfect justness, and whose comprehension is wonderful in such a child, shall read to us while we work, and so cultivate her own fast-springing talents, while she amuses and improves us.

The winter evenings, thus beguiled, will not seem long. We shall not sigh for the viol and the harp to drown the noise of storms, which we shall not hear, or of the drops from the eaves, which we shall not count.

Without possessing much of that faculty called genius, my sister has a very intelligent mind; her taste for poetry, and for every kind of ingenious composition, is delicate, judicious, and awakened.

Yes! my dear Emma, we will employ ourselves from morn to midnight, and the idea of Mr L. shall quickly fade away:

Lichfield, Jan. 1763.

There are, as you justly observe, other faults in the Eloisa besides its too softening influence upon the female heart, and the unpleasant effect of Clara’s passion for the philosopher, so visibly introduced for the purpose of giving eclat to his constancy, which, though forsaken and renounced by Eloisa, he still preserves. I like that he should be put to a test of that sort, by the attentions of a charming woman; but that woman should not have been Clara.

We must greatly regret the affectation of singularity, which betrays so fine a writer into vain attempts of reconciling irreconcilable contrarieties; that the eccentric fervours of a luxuriant imagination should so often bewilder his better sense in the labyrinths of sophistry, till the distinctions of right and wrong are blended and lost.

Yet insensibility alone can doubt that this work abounds with the enchanting effusions of true genius; and prejudice only will attempt to deny that we find an infinite number of remarks, as just as they are new, interspersed through its pages, for the wise regulation of human conduct in the interesting and varied situations of real life.

Two of St Preaux’ letters to Lord B——, and one to Mrs Orbe, are not, as beautiful compositions, excelled by any thing I have read. The first describes his return to Vevai, to Clarens, and Eloisa, after an eight years’ absence, when, in that interval, she was become a wife and mother.

Ah! what a touching history does that letter contain of the genuine feelings, the strong conflicting agitations of an impassioned heart, in the most trying of all imaginable situations!

The other letter to Lord B. has very different features; I know not whether of mere excellence, for that, perhaps, is not possible, but certainly of more sublimity. It contains the history of the expedition to Meillerie. St Preaux’ solemn apostrophe to Eloisa is striking past expression, on shewing her the cypher of her name on the rocks, which he had engraven, in a thousand places, so many years before, interwoven with enamoured verses, characteristic of his then situation.

How we tremble for them both, when he ventures to remind her of the time he had past in contemplating her idea beneath those very rocks, when they were covered with snow, and surrounded by frozen torrents; the dreary silence only interrupted by the howl of the wintry winds, and, at intervals, by the cries of the crow, and the screams of the eagle.

Then, in their return across the lake, the horrid temptation which seizes St Preaux to plunge into its waters with a mistress, irrecoverably lost to his hopes, yet still so passionately adored! and the mutual and final conflicts, in the boat, of a passion with so much difficulty vanquished!

The third letter is addressed to Mrs Orbe. It speaks to her of his dream; of that fatal and impalpable veil it represented! Surely no language, even with all the heightening powers of poetry, can bind the attention, the imagination, and the heart, in stronger fetters than those by which they are chained in perusing those three epistles!

Not any instance of supernatural agency in Shakespeare or Milton; not the ghost of Fingal in Ossian, that fleets to Connal on the midnight blast, as he lay beneath the aged tree, when dim and in tears it stood, and stretched its pale hand over the hero!—nor “the spirit which passed before the face of Job in the silence of the night, when deep sleep had fallen on men, and when, though it stood still, he could not discern the form thereof!”—Not any, nor all of these, have more of that sublimity produced by a mixture of pathos, horror, and obscurity, than the impenetrable veil which foretells the death of Eloisa.

You delight me by promising to dedicate your first leisure to the perusal of the Caledonian bard. Infinitely harmonious, though not measured, his mournful strains will be soothing to your ear, and his sombre imagery graceful in your eye. These strains are in poetry, what the tones of the Æolian harp are in music.

Perhaps you may not find your attention quite so much wrapt as mine in the perusal; for I have a natural prepossession in favour of Ossianic scenery; born, and nursed as I was, in the craggy heights of Derbyshire, and remaining there till six years old.

Immense mountains, dusky beneath the parching and unshaded beams of summer, and, in the fading year, partially or wholly swallowed up by autumnal mists, or covered, for a long duration, by winter’s snows; the blue and narrow stream, rushing from the stony hills, frowning rocks, broken and vast, silent and lonely vallies,—these were the objects that met my infant eyes, and stampt on my young imagination an awful reverence of their dignity.

Blended society has a very exhilarating effect upon my spirits. Under its influence, I become heedless and volatile; but the instant I am alone, or conversing freely with my sister, or with any friend, whose taste has sympathy with mine, the sombre graces resume all their influence, their original possession, in my mind.

You will imagine, then, how poetry of this kind must interest and charm me. I feel myself at home upon the heaths of Malmor, by the roaring torrents of Clutha, and on the green hills of Inisfail.

Adieu!

Lichfield, Feb. 1763.

You tell me I had but too faithfully conceived the situation of your mind, on going into public circles; and you tell me also, that he, whose image thus perpetually intrudes on your imagination, has been repeatedly, by your order, denied admittance on his morning visits, though you could not see him walk up to the door, and return from it, as you sat reading in the parlour, without very distressing emotion; that, but for my reasoning on the subject, you know not if you could have kept your resolution. Ah! how it gratifies me to hope that I may have been the means of preserving my friend from a destiny so unworthy of her virtues.

You saw him afterwards at the play, and replied to the regrets he expressed about never finding you at home, only by a distant curtsy. Brava! my charming heroine! The victory, seldomest and hardest to be obtained, will be yours.

Of what flowers shall I twine your wreath of triumph? The warrior has his laurel, the poet his bays, and the lovers have their myrtle: but of the amaranth, the unfading amaranth, should her garland be formed, in whose consideration the peace of the future has prevailed over the delights of the present.

You insist upon my saying more of myself in this letter; observe, that you hear I have often written verses, and question me concerning their subjects. There will be no great difficulty in obeying you. Self-love, which has neither soul-harrowing sorrow, nor cutting mortification, to reveal, seldom finds the path of egotism thorny. Your partial estimation of my talents, and your question about my verses, now point to that path. If your attention should grow weary in following me through its mazes, you must thank yourself.

It is true that I have written verses, but it is not true that I have written them often. A propensity of that sort appeared early in my infancy. At first my father encouraged it, but my mother threw cold water on the rising fires; and even my father ceased to smile encouragement upon these attempts after my 16th year, in which Dr Darwin unluckily told him, that his daughter’s verses were better than his; a piece of arch injustice to my father’s muse, which disgusted him with mine.

Some few people, besides yourself, have fancied that I had genius. Whether they are, or are not mistaken, it cannot be for me to determine; but certainly Lichfield is now an inauspicious soil for nourishing to maturity that sensitive plant.

It is true I dwell on classic ground. Within the walls which my father’s family inhabits, in this very dining-room, the munificent Mr Walmesley, with the taste, the learning, and the liberality of Mæcenas, administered to rising genius the kind nutriment of attention and praise. Often to his hospitable board were the school-boys, David Garrick and Samuel Johnson, summoned. The parents of the former were of Mr Walmesley’s acquaintance; but those of the latter did not move in his sphere.

It was rumoured that my mother’s father, Mr Hunter, had a boy of marked ability upon his forms. The huge, over-grown, mis-shapen, and probably dirty stripling was brought before the most able scholar and the finest gentleman in Lichfield, or its environs, who, perceiving far more ability than even rumour had promised, placed him at his table, not merely to gratify a transient curiosity, but to assure him of a constant welcome.

Two or three evenings every week, Mr Walmesley called the stupendous stripling, and his livelier companion, David Garrick, who was a few years younger, to his own plentiful board. There, in the hours of convivial gaiety, did he delight to wave every restraint of superiority formed by rank, affluence, polished manners, and the dignity of advanced life; and there, “as man to man, as friend to friend,” he drew forth the different powers of each expanding spirit, by the vivid interchange of sentiment and opinion, and by the cheering influence of generous applause.

Another circumstance combined to heighten the merit of this patronage. Mr Walmesley was a zealous Whig. My grandfather, then master of the free school, perceiving Johnson’s abilities, had, to his own honour, taken as much pains with him as with the young gentlemen whose parents paid an high price for their pupilage; but my grandfather was a Jacobite, and Sam. Johnson had imbibed his master’s absurd zeal for the forfeit rights of the house of Stuart; and this, though his father had very loyal principles; but the anxiety attendant on penurious circumstances, probably left old Johnson little leisure or inclination to talk on political subjects.

His son, I am told, even at that early period of life, maintained his opinions, on every subject, with the same sturdy, dogmatical, and arrogant fierceness with which he now overbears all opposition to them in company.

At present, we can well conceive the probability of his dogmatism being patiently supported by attending admirers, awed by the literary eminence on which he stands. But how great must have been Mr Walmesley’s love of genius; how great his generous respect for its dependent situation, that could so far restrain a naturally impetuous temper, as to induce him to suffer insolent sallies from the son of an indigent bookseller, and on a subject which, so handled by people of his own rank, he would have dashed back in their faces with no small degree of asperity!

My father wrote the following epitaph on Mr Walmesley: I send it to you, because it is what epitaphs so seldom are,—characteristic. I am sure you will be interested in conceiving a just idea of the first patron of our modern Roscius, and of the illustrious author of the Rambler:

Prior tells us, that every man of ability should, either by the compass, the pencil, the pen, or the sword, leave his name in life’s visit. With all Mr Walmesley’s knowledge, accomplishments, taste, and munificence, not having stept out in any public line of literature, his name must have passed into oblivion, had he not been the first who distinguished his illustrious townsmen.

By that circumstance, he rendered his memory immortal as the talents he drew forth. While Johnson and Garrick are remembered, their first patron will not be forgotten. Who is there of a soul so grovelling, as would not wish for their memories an honourable immortality?

How inconceivable, then, is the idiotism of short-sighted pride, which affects to associate only with people of a certain rank, and which induces the gentlemen, as they call themselves, to preclude from their reputation the glory of having been able to discern genius, and to raise it from obscurity!

I speak not from any selfish consideration. Whatever little talents I may possess, they have not to struggle up to the notice of my neighbours from the gloom of an inferior station. My father is a gentleman by birth and by his profession; a scholar by education; and, being canon of this cathedral, his daughter necessarily converses on terms of equality with the proudest inhabitants of our little city; but they perceive nothing of those uncommon talents with which your partiality has invested her.

Attention and praise are the summer-suns that must unfold and ripen the germs of imagination, ere they can possibly produce fruit worthy the taste of the public.

Had it been my lot to have been animated by the smiles, and sustained and encouraged in my studies, and in my little sallies of poetic invention, by the applause of a Walmesley, I might perhaps have ventured myself among the candidates for the literary palms.

But may it not be better as it is? Let me be contented with being happy, without sighing that I am not distinguished. Ah! who knows from what painful solicitudes my obscurity may have preserved me!

My epistle grows long. You were, however, snatched from the mazes through which the pleasure of talking about myself might have led you, by my pen having started back into brighter and more interesting scenes; scenes that, once passing beneath this roof, have stamped a local distinction upon the palace of the Bishop of Lichfield, beyond the power of the crosier or the mitre to bestow.

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Lichfield, Feb. 1763.

You say you know many who profess to admire the Rambler, and yet declare war against poetry.—’Tis very likely; the family of the pretenders is numerous: but, be assured, the incapacity of comprehending the excellencies of Johnson’s Essays must be inevitable to those who have no taste for poetry.

It is not the rhymes or measures of poetry which are either unintelligible or disgusting to the tribe of the prosers; but it is the imagery, whose strength and grace they can no more perceive than they can discern the beauty of Raphael’s, or the force of Michael Angelo’s figures. It is the resemblance between objects, which, when shadowed forth in metaphor, they cannot trace; it is these which puzzle, and make them say, with truth, to the poet:

Now, no poetry is more lavish in the use of imagery and metaphor than the prose of Samuel Johnson.

I conceive the possibility even of people who have a tuneless ear, and an insensible imagination, receiving genuine pleasure from Shakespeare’s plays, provided such people possess strong common sense; and this notwithstanding the higher poetic graces of figure and allusion, of which they can have so little comprehension, and in which the plays of Shakespeare so luxuriantly abound; since, to incident, to character, to humour, sometimes to wit, and always to the force of those passions, strongly delineated, and whose influence is universal, the merest prosers are awakened. No palate, capable of relishing any intellectual food, but may feed with avidity at the table of that mighty master, upon which, kings and pedlars, ghosts and jesters, witches and tapsters, pathos and obscenity, murder and fun, are served up in exhaustless variety.

It is not so with Milton, or the Johnson of this century. Neither of their writings contain any of that universally acceptable ingredient, humour.—Their pens always remain in the higher latitudes of abstract ideas, of ornamented and figurative language. The comprehension of the prosers have neither respiration nor inspiration on these mental heights.

If I have spoken ludicrously of that blended mass of character and style which constitutes the drama of Shakespeare, you must not, therefore, suppose that I meant any reflection on the greatest and dearest of our fine writers.

The world is exactly that motley mixture; and, to the world, it is the highest duty of the dramatic poet to hold a faithful mirror, which ought to reflect something, at least, of all which is found there.

To every capacity, not fastidiously diseased by the senseless jargon of the ancients respecting the dignity of the drama, and the indispensability of its unities, how much more interesting is the concourse of men and women in Shakespeare’s tragedies, than the synods of heroes and heroines exhibited by those dramatic poets who bend their vassal fancy to the despot Aristotle, as he sits on the shelves of the pedants, his dusty throne clothed in the majesty of elapsed ages!

How coldly does that Grecian critic sacrifice the lively interest created by a concentered display of more striking events than could have happened in the course of a few hours, and by the introduction of the varied manners resulting from a bold change of scene from city to city, and from kingdom to kingdom!—How coldly, I say, does he sacrifice them to the imaginary difficulty of an audience accompanying their poet through his local transitions, and when he outstrips the slow foot of Time!

Few are the instances, though there have been some, where any period of any man’s life, not exceeding a few hours, has been sufficiently eventful to preserve the dramatist, who represents it, from the necessity of substituting common-place sentiments for awakening incidents, and frigid declamation for the warm sallies of the heart, kindling beneath the impression of new and trying situations. When I first began to read, with a discriminating propensity, and to compare the unfettered plans of Shakespeare with the more correct and regular, though infinitely less interesting ones, of his celebrated rivals, it appeared to me, that he was not more happy in the superiority of his genius to theirs, than in his bold contempt of the restrictions to which they submitted. It was this contempt which enabled him to shew us, in the course of a single play, a group of characters, who, instead of declaiming about and about one interesting event, occupying the space only of a few hours, exhibit, in different views, their characteristic peculiarities, beneath the animating force of various and contrasted circumstances, which demand the supposed elapse of weeks, perhaps months, and sometimes even years, that they may be arranged naturally, and produce their proper effect.

Thus, when several striking events in the lives of interesting persons, whether real or imaginary, are brought to the eye in a dramatic focus, their effect is like that of the sun’s rays collected in a burning glass, and the sensibilities of the audience catch fire.

The other day I conversed with a gentleman, who spoke to me of having lately heard our great Johnson declaim, in a large circle, upon the frigid consequences that must generally result from the poet’s adherence to the Grecian rules for the drama.

Amongst other plain reasons against their necessity, this gentleman told me, Johnson strongly insisted that it was more easy for the imagination to pursue Posthumus from London to Rome, and back again as rapidly to the British coast, than it was to consider the stage as the palace of Cymbeline; that, if the imagination cannot accommodate itself to these local changes, and pass, at will, over any given portion of time, it will never, for a moment, present to us Mrs Cibber as Imogen, nor allow us to shed one tear over sorrows, of whose fiction it will, with dull vigilance, perpetually remind us.

It flatters me that my juvenile convictions on this subject meet the sanction of his approbation whose reasoning is all truth and day-light, when passion and prejudice do not warp its ingenuousness, and darken its lustre.

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Lichfield, Feb. 1763.

You say you are proud of the vivacity with which you have resumed your employments, to the exclusion of tender musings. You have a right to be so. It is beyond my hopes that you should so soon have shaken off this unwholesome mist from the morning sun of your youth.

The last words of that sentence bring to my recollection a pleasing little poem, to which, in infancy, I have often listened with delight from the lips of my mother, who used frequently to repeat it as she sat at work. She had learnt it from a lady who was the friend of her youth.

Wholly without literary curiosity, as she never saw it printed, so she never asked after the author; consequently, could give me no information on that subject. She had never taken the trouble of copying it; therefore was it mine as it was hers, by oral tradition, before I attained my tenth year. Its easy and tuneful numbers charmed my ear; and, with a great deal of giddy vivacity on a thousand occasions, I had yet an inherent fondness for seeing the perspectives of opening life through the clare-oscure of a meditative fancy, particularly where the sombre tints were ultimately prevalent.

Behold this little orphan ode, which I have searched for in vain through the pages of our poets:

I do not apprehend this engaging poem to be either of very early or very late date; for it has neither the stiff quaintness which we see in the compositions of the second class of poets, in times long past, nor the polished accuracy of those who stand high on that line in the present century.

The ode opens beautifully, and the exclamations in the third and fourth stanza have the force of truth, and all the charm of pathetic sweetness, except that the pretty simile, which concludes the fourth verse, wants verbal perspicuity. It means, evidently enough, that love and joy play upon the mind in that early season of life, like the western wind upon flowers; but,

is a hard, and, under every license, an inadmissible inversion, while it hints, not expresses, the sense.

Till within the last half-century, poets seemed content to convey their ideas to the reader somewhat abortively. Shakespeare continually does it, and has therefore given scope to commentators, ad infinitum. They had spared themselves much fruitless trouble by recollecting that the privilege of hinting, instead of expressing a similitude, an image, or a reflection, was much claimed at that period, and, indeed, long after, and that Shakespeare availed himself of it very lavishly.

The remaining stanzas in this my favourite little ode, appear to me poetically faultless; as, alas! they are too certainly just. The eighth forms a fine antithesis to the fifth.

By the words, “second class of poets,” in one of the above sentences, I by no means meant those of moderate genius; but I think no writer can justly, and, on deliberation, be deemed first-rate, if another, on his own line, is confessedly his superior.

Among our English poets, and of those only, alas! can I judge, the first class seems formed by those who are at the head of some particular branch in their science;—as Spencer of the allegoric; Shakespeare of the dramatic; Milton of the epic; Butler of the burlesque; Dryden, Pope, and Sam. Johnson, of the ethic, heroic, and satiric; Thomson of the descriptive; Prior of the narrative and epigrammatic; Gray of the lyric and elegiac; Shenstone of the pastoral.

Admitting the justice of my criterion for the formation of the first poetic classes amongst our authors, it must yet be confessed, that there are, in the second, bards of more exalted genius than some whose names have a right to be arranged in the first, as being first in their line of writing. For instance, Collins and Mason are much greater poets than Butler or Shenstone; but then they have, in Gray, a superior in their line, the lyric; and Butler and Shenstone have no equal in theirs, the burlesque and the pastoral. Pope’s pastorals are more brilliant, but brilliance is out of character in that department.—They are less tender, less simple, less easy, and, therefore, as pastorals, less excellent. Gay’s are vulgar, without being humourous. There can be nothing interesting to poetic readers in the genuine ideas of clodpoles and blowsy milk-maids, if the characters themselves are not rendered at least laughable amidst their coarse employments and rude wassaling.

In Shenstone’s poems we see the elegant, yet natural ideas of a man of imagination, taste, and sensibility, who, though versed in polite learning, is not ideally, but literally, devoted to the simplicity of pastoral life; superintending the health and safety of his own flocks and herds; leading the ductile pathway through the loveliest glade; the vagrant rill in those winding channels, so dear to beauty; and nourishing, in the bosom of his own vale, all the delicacy of social and friendly intercourse, and all the sweetness of enamoured affection.

I do not attempt to send you news; since neither love nor marriage, novel prosperity, or recent misfortune, have produced any change since I wrote to you last, in the situation or sentiments of those who interest you in our little city; and it is time to bid you adieu. My sister has brought my work-bag, with her own, down stairs for the evening. My father and mother are gone out to a card-party. The curtains are dropt, and the chill white world shut out. The candles shine chearily, and the fire burns bright in the clean hearth. Little Honora draws her chair to the table as I write, Hawksworth’s Almoran and Hamet open in her hand. What a beautiful story!—How sublime its moral! Honora looks at me, her eyes sparkling with intellectual avidity.—The young mind must not be deprived of its evening nutriment.

Lichfield, June 1763.

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My imagination paints, with all the animation of probable hope, the venerable remains of Roman antiquity, and the finest paintings on the globe; the beauty of Raphael, the grace of Guido, the tints of Titian, and the majesty of Michael Angelo; and such landscapes!

While nature, in a climate which has been called her garden, shall show me scenes transcending the utmost powers of the pencil. We shall find them on the banks of the silver Arno, and in his glowing vallies encircled by woods, compared to whose heights, variety, and extent, the groves of Britain are thickets.

What a striking image of the sylvan luxuriance of Italy is presented to us in a simile of Milton’s, for the fallen angels:

I have heard my father say, that, when he was in Italy with Lord Charles Fitzroy, they travelled through Valambrosa in autumn, after the leaves had began to fall, and that their guide was obliged to try what was land and what water, by pushing a long pole before him, which he carried in his hand, the vale being so very irriguous, and the leaves so totally covering the surface of the streams.

In a country, sultry as Italy, when the trees are in full leaf, how grateful to the senses must be their lavish shade, in that valley, eternally fresh and green, from the springs that gush around their roots, and whose very branch finds a mirror in the shining waters!

Then the orchestra of the Italian cities!—their celebrated orchestra! But, beneath my expectations of its graces, no very warm enthusiasm kindles in my bosom. As to the powers of execution, both in the vocal and instrumental line, unprejudiced judges assure me, the best Italian performers find their way to England; and what spirit that has melted, chilled, and glowed beneath the influence of Handel’s strains of those different and contrasting passions, awakened to so much energy by his lofty harmonies, and angelic airs, can be more than transiently pleased with the cloying sweetness of one eternal love-song, varied only by the fury of a jealous rant? I speak of the serious opera. The burlesque, or even convivial music of any country, is not much to my taste; and, in the graver line, can the most perfect tones of voice and instrument, the silver heights of the clear soprano, the trill, the shake, the brilliant execution, the artful and “long-drawn cadence,” make amends for the sameness of their melodies, and the poverty respecting air, that renders their drumming basses contemptible?

After all, to what numbers do the Italian delicacies, as they are called, more than recompence the want of Handelian variety, pathos, and sublimity! Our polite people, it seems, desert the oratorios, and swarm in the opera-house.

It is a national disgrace; but I think it will not be a lasting one. Nature, and the generous perceptions, must awaken from this musical frivolity into which the sorcery of fashion, and the cunning of the Italian masters, have plunged them. The eclat of sublime genius, in almost every science, seems doomed to suffer a long suppression, ere it rises to its just level. Shakespeare’s plays were, in a great measure, banished our stage, and, consequently, were familiar only to the few, from the time of Charles II., till Mr Garrick recalled them; and Milton had no general attention till Addison brought him forward.

Surely those who do really prefer an opera to an oratorio, must be more pleased with the modern tragedies than with those of Shakespeare! A trivial and effeminate taste will prevail alike in every science.

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Lichfield, Jan. 1764.

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And so, my gentle Emma, you stood rebuked in the presence of two divines, for your preference of the Ramblers to the Spectators, which, it seems, they told you was little to be expected from the delicacy of female taste. Had I been present, they would have found me saucy enough to observe to them, that, if Johnson had, instead of being now alive, been dead as many years as Addison, they would themselves, with the whole literary world, have joined you in this preference.

Let us examine the subject still farther; and, as my last letter hovered with you over a little blossoming myrtle, an ornament of the Lichfield groves, we will, if you please, wander beneath the shade of that majestic oak which took its first root in this valley, was transplanted while yet a sapling, and now spreads wide its ample arms in the forests of literature. But, to drop the metaphor, which, by the way, does not run very well on all four, the words valley and forest forming an imperfect sentence; the first being literally the birth-place of Johnson, the second figuratively shadowing forth his present situation in the learned world; but whip such pedants, even if this letter were to be read to scholars, who shall demand precision in the allusions of an imagination which has but just imbibed the warmth of twenty summers. Alas! of the soft and musically-sounding teens, I took an eternal farewell the 12th of last December.

It was the unpleasantest birth-day I ever experienced; a sort of funereal sadness hung about my heart, and reflection tolled the knell of departed girlhood. But you will reproach me, that, after having promised to lead you amidst the branches of the great literary oak, I yet linger beneath the willows of egotism.

We will hasten from under their shade, and unite in pondering at the strange inaccuracy of general opinion, concerning the writings of our illustrious Lichfieldian. They are allowed to abound in matter, and to have great force, but are deemed rough and inharmonious. We hear much of the elegance and mellifluent construction of Addison’s language, and of the hard, unmanageable style of Samuel Johnson.

Now, that his long and uncommon words, derived from the dead languages, and so lavishly interwoven with his own, have sometimes an unhappy, and even ridiculous effect upon the flow of his periods, must be granted; but that they, in general, give them added grace and sweetness, is no less true. Greek and Latin being so much higher voweled than English, a liberal intermixture of words, springing from their roots, must surely render the style more graceful and sonorous.

The language of Addison appears to me as only possessing distinguished excellence from comparing it with that of his contemporary writers; and even then we should except some of them, Bolingbroke and Swift for instance, who wrote prose at least as well; that, compared with the style of our present best essayists, it is neither remarkably perspicuous nor remarkably musical. He often uses more words than are necessary to express his sense, and that habit has always a tendency to confuse and enfeeble his diction. Then he frequently finishes his sentence with insignificant words, such as, with,—it,—upon,—against, &c., which produce the same effect upon the ear, as the eye perceives from a jerk, or sudden stop in motion. Such a paltry termination cuts the sentence off in a sharp angle, and utterly precludes that roundness, that majestic sweep of sound, in which the Johnsonian periods so generally close: periods that my ear finds of such full and satisfying harmony, as not to need either rhyme or measure to add more sweetness. In truth, rhyme and measure are but the body of poetry, not its spirit, and its spirit breathes through all the pages of the Rambler.

I am tempted to cite a passage from each of these celebrated writers, as specimens of their different style, still farther to confirm your conviction how strange the prejudice which induces people to fancy that the superiority, in point of elegance, remains with Addison. I shall draw my quotation from him, out of the twenty-third number of the Spectator, Addison’s signature; its subject, the mischiefs occasioned by a malicious character. From Johnson, on the pleasures which result from the influence of good humour. Rambler, vol. III. No. 72.

You will find the words in Italics which strike me as forming the inelegance of Addison’s style; and you will perceive that the words within hooks constitute its redundance.

Addison.

“[There is] nothing [that] more betrays a base, ungenerous spirit, than [the] giving [of] secret stabs to a man’s reputation. Lampoons and satires, [that are] written with wit and spirit, are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable. For this reason, I am very much troubled when I see the talents of humour and ridicule in the possession of an ill-natured man. There cannot be a greater gratification to a barbarous [and inhuman] wit, than to stir up sorrow in the heart of a private person; to raise uneasiness among near relations, and to expose whole families to derision at the same time that he remains unseen and undiscovered. If, besides the accomplishments of being witty and ill-natured, a man is vicious into the bargain, he is one of the most mischievous creatures that can enter into a civil society. His satire will then chiefly fall upon those who ought to be most exempt from it.”

Johnson.

“Good humour may properly be termed the balm of being, the quality to which all that adorns or elevates life must owe its power of pleasing. Without good humour, learning and bravery can be only formidable, and confer that superiority which swells the heart of the lion in the desert, where he roars without reply, and ravages without resistance. Without good humour, virtue may indeed awe by its dignity, and amaze by its brightness, but must always be viewed at a distance, and will scarcely gain a friend, or attract an imitator.

“Good humour may be defined an habit of being pleased, a constant and perennial softness of manners, easiness of approach, and suavity of disposition; like that which every man perceives in himself, when the first transports of new felicity have subsided, and his thoughts are only kept in motion by a slow succession of soft impulses. Good humour is a state between gaiety and unconcern; the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another.

“It is imagined by many, that, whenever they aspire to please, they are required to be merry, to shew the gladness of their souls by flights of pleasantry and sudden bursts of laughter, and to lose all reflection in overflowing jollity. But, though these men may be courted for a time, and heard with admiration and applause, they seldom delight us long. We enjoy them a little, and then retire to easiness and good humour; as the eye gazes a while on eminences glittering with the sun, but soon turns aching away to verdure and to flowers.”

These passages, from Johnson’s Rambler, form, in my opinion, a perfect example of a beautiful and faultless style, in which no syllable could be transposed, to which not one could be added, and from which there could not one be taken away, without a diminution either of conciseness, perspicuity, or beauty. In one respect, and only one, the passages on good humour differ from the generality of Johnson’s writings. Excepting the word suavity, they do not contain, neither indeed does the whole essay contain, one Latinism that is not in common use.

Observe with how much more grace and elegance the periods flow, than in the quotation from Addison, with its giving of stabs, its stirring up, and its into the bargain.

Alas! how much is it to be lamented that Johnson, who could so clearly perceive, and so eloquently display, the influence of the pleasing quality upon individual and upon general happiness, that, like mercy, it is “twice blessed,” should himself indulge such an habitual, such a malicious moroseness, as to make it impossible to place any confidence in the duration of his smiles and approachability; that, like an ill-conditioned mastiff, nobody can be sure, even in the instant when he seems stroked into tameness and kind familiarity, that he will not seize upon the self-esteem of his auditors, and worry it unmercifully, and this without any provocation, or at least any adequate provocation!

I beg to be understood, that I confine my prediction of the inevitable preference which Johnson’s best style will, in future, obtain over Addison’s, to the essays on serious subjects which each has written. In sly and humourously playful satire, Addison remains, and will perhaps, for ever remain, unrivalled. Johnson seldom attempts that line of composition, and when he attempts it, he fails. Neither has he any power to assume the language and manner of writing that belong to country esquires, coquettish misses, and saucy chamber-maids. Every thing Johnson writes, bears the stamp and image of his own peculiar style,

Lichfield, Jan. 1764.

Since you compliment my criticisms with possessing some power of discrimination, I feel disposed to lose my attention to the loud storms and gloomy horizon of this cheerless evening, by imparting the reflections which arose last night in my mind, as I read another of Addison’s Spectators to my sister and Honora. We had searched for one on the subject, so beautifully discussed in the Rambler, from which my last letter gave you extracts, and found it in the second volume, No. 169.

The language of this elder-born essay is not only less elegant, but some of the observations, and those the most material, did not appear to my sister, or myself, at all just; yet the remarks in the three first sentences are equally true with those I quoted from the Rambler. They are, however, by no means equally ingenious.

The observation in the fourth paragraph is of a more discriminating nature than those that precede it, which are very much on the surface; and which the commonest understanding, if it reflects at all on the advantages of good nature, must make for itself. Johnson’s definition displays the latent essence and happy effects of this pleasing quality, by an investigation which genius only could make, but which, when made, good sense will instantly perceive and acknowledge to be just.

There is, however, ingenuity, as I observed above, in the fourth paragraph of Addison’s definition; in the observation, that “good breeding is a kind of artificial humanity, or, in other words, (Addison is mighty fond of expressing the same thing several different ways) an imitation and mimickry of good nature.” “It is affability, complaisance, and easiness of temper, reduced into an art.”

With his usual verbal redundance, he proceeds to tell us, “that these exterior shews and appearances of humanity render a man wonderfully popular and beloved, when they are founded upon real good nature; but, without it, are like hypocrisy in religion, or a bare form of holiness, which, when it is discovered, makes a man more detestable than professed impiety.”

Now, this last appears to us a very mistaken assertion, astonishing from a writer who had lived in the gay and busy world, and must have had perpetual opportunities of perceiving, that politeness, so far from making an ill-natured man more detestable, is the only thing which can render him supportable. It is a silver cord, whose firmness we may trust; secure that, in the social hour, it will bind the malevolent passions at the bottom of the polite man’s heart, and prevent them from darting out upon our self-esteem, and upon the pleasures of conversation.

We think this author no less mistaken when he supposes, upon the same ground, that hypocrisy in religion makes people more detested than professed impiety.

That such hypocrisy is more criminal than avowed disbelief, will be granted, because it adds falsehood to the ingratitude of irreligion; but surely, however odious, it is in the eyes of men less offensive than avowed impiety, which defies every law, both human and divine, which insults the understanding, and shocks the sensibility of the better part of mankind.

Religious hypocrisy, at least, evinces respect for the institution it takes the trouble of seeming to venerate, and spares the always implied stigma of weak credulity, which the scoff of the infidel throws upon such as avow faith in their religion, and trust in its promises.

So it is with the politeness of an ill-natured man. We are conscious that he is likely enough to satirize our words, and misrepresent our actions. But, as his character is known, the good will probably despise his malice, and not think worse of us for its effusions in our disfavour, and we shall not be insulted with the visible marks of his contempt. We shall mingle with him in society without terror lest our delicacy should be brutally lacerated. We have, therefore, internal evidence that the decision of this writer is erroneous, and that good breeding is an admirable substitute for good nature, where the genuine virtue cannot be found.

After reprobating this substitute, our author, instead of exhorting us to acquire the reality, while we scorn the seeming, declares, that “nothing is capable of forcing up this good quality in the mind where it does not grow of itself; that it is one of the blessings of an happy constitution, which education may improve, but not produce.”

How impolitic, how strange is this assertion, proceeding from the pen of a professed moralist! since it totally does away the virtue of good nature, reducing it to a mere involuntary propensity, and teaching the naturally fierce and implacable to despair of being able to humanize their temper; nay, even persuading them to scorn the adoption of those manners, by which it might be restrained from disturbing the peace of the company in which they mix.

I trust Mr Addison is wholly mistaken on this subject; that, though it proves a much more arduous task to destroy the malignant passions than to restrain their imperious sallies in public, yet that reason and religion may, in time, render a disposition naturally morose, gentle, forbearing, and benevolent.

It is disclaiming the free agency of man, it is fatalism, to urge that any vice, however inherent in our natures, is unconquerable. It would be thought no excuse for debauchery, that a man should tell us he is naturally lascivious, gluttonous, and greedy of wine; for injustice, that he has an innate covetousness; and, for murder, that he is constitutionally cruel. And yet, if native ill propensities of every kind are not to be subdued, he is more unfortunate than criminal.

Addison is declaiming very superficially through this paper, strangely inattentive to the deduction which necessarily proceeds from his assertion. Nobody will suspect him of being intentionally an enemy to the interests of morality. Certainly he would have been one of the first to controvert the doctrine, that nothing is capable of forcing up chastity, temperance, justice, and mercy, in any human bosom, where they are not natives of the soil; and yet every evil propensity must be alike conquerable, though some may, with more difficulty than others, be overcome.

Good nature, as defined, and justly defined, by this author, is but another word for that charity which the gospel so strongly inculcates, since he tells us, that “a being, whose best actions must be seen (as he oddly expresses it) with some grains of allowance, cannot be too mild, moderate, and forgiving; that, amongst all the monstrous characters in human nature, there is none so odious, so exquisitely ridiculous, as that of a severe and rigid temper in a worthless man.”

Mildness and sweetness of manners, under the name of charity, are, by the gospel, considered of so much importance, that, without them, every other virtue is declared unavailing; and it is there more frequently and more fervently inculcated than any other duty. For what purpose inculcated, if, where it is not inherent, it cannot be obtained? And why does a moral philosopher praise and teach us to admire a good quality, which he tells us either exists constitutionally, or does not exist at all? Since, if that assertion be true, our admiration cannot edify or avail us any thing.

But let us, judging in this instance better for ourselves, hope and believe, that an originally ill-natured being may, by the force of reason, and by the consciousness how much it is his duty as a Christian, and his interest as a member of society, soften and illuminate these rigid and dark propensities, till he changes their nature into mildness and universal good will.

Addison allows the possibility of an ill-natured man being polite. Surely he should have reflected that we are creatures of habit, and that it is a great step gained to become capable of restraining a bad disposition, from any motive whatever:

Why should this celebrated moralist deny to reason and religion the power of influencing the ill-natured to become genuinely benevolent, since he allows that the force of education, and of social policy, are sufficient to induce them to assume those manners which imitate benevolence? and surely an higher degree of self-interest, the interest of their eternal welfare, might still more forcibly lead them to acquire the real virtue.

In this same essay, the author makes an enthusiastic eulogium on a trait of parading benevolence, instanced by Xenophon, in his imaginary character of an excellent monarch. It is here produced by Addison, as an illustration of the beauty of that generous virtue; the merit of which virtue, the immediately preceding sentence, in that Spectator, had wholly done away. Behold the sublime instance of refined humanity!

A great prince desires, on his death-bed, that, instead of being, after the custom of the ancients, enshrined in gold and silver, his body may be buried in the ground; that, while his soul was returned to him who gave it, his corporeal part, mingling with the earth, might become beneficial to mankind.

In my opinion, this request disgraces, by its frivolity, the greatness of genuine benevolence. A sumptuous monument for him, whose life had been polluted by vice, is monstrous; and it is ridiculous when it covers the remains of one whose existence had passed away without exertion, however unstained by flagrant vices. But a splendid tomb, when it keeps alive the remembrance of the virtuous, has a tendency to induce men to imitate that excellence, which their curiosity had led them to contemplate. The seeing its memory thus honourably perpetuated, is likely to be of much more benefit to mankind than the remote, the trivial, the ludicrous advantage procured by a single carcass producing, after a long process of putrefaction, a few paltry vegetables.

I apprehend that the request is not only ridiculous, when alleged as “an instance of that overflowing humanity which could not have entered into the imagination of any writer who had not a soul filled with great ideas,” but that the idea itself is unphilosophic. The human frame in a putrescent state, mingling with the earth, is, I have heard, more likely to become a nuisance than a benefit to the living; and the consumption of dead bodies on the funeral pile is alleged to have been a custom highly advantageous to the health of the ancients. So we will take our leave of this panegyric on carrot and turnip generosity, which was not, after all, likely to produce good carrots and turnips.

It is too late to discuss other subjects. Good night!

Lichfield, Feb. 1764.

I enter my protest totally, yes totally, against the decision at your late conversation respecting Shakespeare’s supposed deficiency in tenderness and fire, when he speaks in the character of a lover, and concerning his want of intimacy with the nature of the most prevalent of all the passions.

Surely his advocate in your circle ought not to have given up an inch of ground on this subject; not allowed that Shakespeare’s lovers were an atom less natural, less animated, than his kings, his princes, his heroes, or his statesmen.

That, in the enamoured character, he is often seduced into jingling a rhyme, and playing with a verbal conceit, is true; but I think it is not true that his lovers, more frequently than his other personages, turn out of the path of nature and passion, to follow those will-a-wisps of the fancy.

It appears to me, that Shakespeare often conveys more truly impassioned affection in a very few words, or in a short sentence, than are contained in most of the florid harangues of our modern dramatists, and this even where the passion between the sexes is not meant to be the master-tint of the portrait.

To give an instance,—Coriolanus comes not forward in Shakespeare’s play, any more than in history, as an impassioned lover or husband, but as the insulted hero, who violently, though not ignobly, revenges himself upon his ungrateful country; and yet the author makes us feel, in four lines, that, however patrician haughtiness and jealous honour might be the leading traits in the character of Coriolanus, yet that love, love of the most fervent kind, struggled with them for dominion in that proud heart, and obtained a final triumph.

You remember the scene in which the mother and wife of the banished consul bear to him, at Corioli, the supplicating embassy of humbled Rome, after he had led the Volscians triumphant to her very gates, was made the enemy’s general, and styled Coriolanus.

Listen to the stern and injured warrior, when he first beholds these formidable interposers, and judge if Shakespeare uniformly considered the passion of love as of weak and subordinate influence in the conduct of life. The fair ambassadors appear at the moment in which he is solemnly declaring that he will not listen to any farther overtures from his thankless country; and he proceeds:—

After farther endeavours to stimulate his own resistance, he grows tender again, exclaiming,—

Does Shakespeare want intimacy with the tender passions? Affection triumphs;—Coriolanus yields; and is murdered by the Volscians for what they consider as his apostasy.

* * * * * * * * *

Lichfield, Feb. 1764.

From a reputed connoisseur in the fine arts, I can present you with an observation, which is a perfect counterpart to the late decision you transmitted to me from the literary party at Lady B——’s, concerning Shakespeare’s lack of skill in conceiving and uttering amorous sentiments.

This connoisseur maintained, last night, in our drawing-room, amidst a large company, that Handel wanted delicacy and tenderness in his compositions; yes, he advanced it, though familiar with the elegant and enamoured sweetness which breathes through all the strains of the delicious Acis and Galatea;—with the “Return, O God of Hosts,”—the “Pious Orgies,”—“O Sleep, why dost thou leave me,”—“Father of Heaven;”—and, in short, with a countless number of accompanied recitatives and airs, which equally display an unmatched talent for melting softness and tender persuasion.

The ingenious Mr S——, whose fine voice and perfect expression do so much justice to the vocal music of Handel, was on my side in warmly defending the claims of that great master to an equal degree of excellence in the delicate and pathetic, as in the spirited and sublime composition. It was acknowledged that we came off victorious in that controversy.

After the dispute was closed, I mentioned a circumstance that gives an uncommon degree of credit to one of Handel’s pathetic songs. A deceased clerical friend of my father’s had given his female, as well as his male children, literary educations, though he could not leave them fortunes. One of these daughters passed a few days with us when I was in my sixteenth year, in her road to town, whither she was going, in order to superintend the education of two little girls of consequence, whose mother had then lately died.

The governess-elect was not much more than twenty; her figure low, and ill formed; her complexion pale, and of an olive tint; her face flat; her mouth wide; and she had so extreme a squint, that one eye appeared almost turned into her head. With this repulsive exterior, she had a very pleasing address; her tone of voice, in speaking, was interesting, and there was an attic spirit in her conversation.

She went with us to pass an evening at Mr Howard’s, where it is always so pleasant to pass evenings. After supper, the moon shining splendidly upon the gloom of a calm night, it was proposed that we should adjourn to a pretty arched grotto, formed of shells and fossils, in this gentleman’s garden. The grotto stands on the edge of a little velvet lawn, planted with shrubs and trees, which have clumps of flowers around their base. This lawn slopes down to a large pool, and, as we do not see its termination, it appears from the grotto like a considerable river.

The moon was shedding a shower of diamonds in the water, and edging with silver the highest leaves of the trees. Singing was proposed while we were in the grotto; and our agreeable guest being solicited, favoured us with the two single verses of that beautiful duet in Athaliah:

Her voice was of the most liquid softness, and she expressed those honied and ever-soothing notes in a style the most enchantingly touching. Tears of delight streamed down my cheeks as I listened, and I fancied it impossible to feel an anguish so keen as might not be soothed and comforted by the persuasive sweetness with which she uttered,

When the song was over, Mr H——d exclaimed, “My dear young lady, whenever you shall wish to subdue a heart, let this song be your weapon of attack, and it will be impossible you should meet an invulnerable shield.”

When we returned to the stronger light of the candles, in the supper-room, all the personal defects of the syren were vanished; at least, I saw them no longer.

In a few weeks after, we heard that Mr L—— had married his children’s governess, and that the bride and groom had travelled through Shrewsbury to their seat in Wales, with a superb equipage, and a great retinue of servants.

A friend of mine, intimate with Mrs L——’s sister, has since told me, that when this lucky young woman had been about a month in Mr L——’s family, as governess, (yet, as she had properly stipulated, treated by himself and his company as a gentlewoman,) the house being full of guests, it was one evening proposed that the song should go round. When the governess was called upon, she sung the very air whose witching sweetness had, in the grotto, taken prisoner every faculty of my young imagination.

Her sister told my friend, that was the first time Mr L—— had heard her sing. He had shewn little attention to the charms of her conversation. The emanations of genius and of knowledge are, to the generality of what are called polite men and women, but as colours to the blind. We do not find it so with vocal music; where there is any ear, it speaks to the passions, and their influence is universal.

The next morning, Mr L—— offered to the acceptance of the songstress, in his own proper person, an attractive figure, a creditable degree of intellect, at least for a man of fashion, a good character, and a splendid fortune.

If Handel had wanted sweetness and delicacy in his strains, it is not probable that such great effect would have been produced by an air of his, warbled through lips so little Medicean.

I inclose a little musical recipe for love-sick melancholy. The first verse is an old ditty to a gay and pleasing tune. The remaining stanzas are mine, following the lead of the original in its pretty, though quaint idea. I have found not only pleasure, but use, in singing to myself, as I worked or walked, these anti-sorrowful strains. They impart that exhilaration of spirits to a young female heart, beneath the experienced fickleness of the other sex, which wine is said to produce in the slighted swain, and without the mischiefs of ebriety, and with more permanent counteraction to weak despondence.

But, to any thing resembling despondence, my regrets never amounted, or they had been past the reach of a sing-song restorative. In truth, they had no darker hue than a little pensive and peevish languor, stealing at intervals over my cheerfulness; yet why should I suffer the slightest dejection to pale, for an instant, the fires of my youth? Too glowing are my friendships for my heart to stand in need of nourishing the dull lamp of fruitless love, lest its mansion should grow chill and dreary from the frost of indifference.

Quenched then, for ever, be this sickly flame!—and surely, the gentler and more cheering influence of unmixed amity and universal benevolence, which make the good of numbers their own, shall more than supply its place, and more than recompence its extinction.

You will, perhaps, observe, that this spirited little song does not exactly suit the nature of an attachment which was never plighted; nay, whose very existence was hardly, by either party, confessed to the other. No matter! it is joyous, and it cheers my spirits; it is triumphant, and it liberates my heart!

Adieu!

Lichfield, April 1764.

At last he is here,—this brother elect!—We had heard of his being arrived in London a week before; but he fixed not with his sister the period at which she would see him, mentioning business that might detain him more than a fortnight.

My mother had engaged half Lichfield to play at cards with her on Wednesday se’nnight. About one o’clock that day, Mrs Porter sent to inform us, that her brother was that instant arrived, and would accompany her hither to tea. She was one of the party engaged here, so neither of them could be ignorant that, upon this plan, the first interview must be witnessed by twenty pair of curious eyes. But it was not for us to make that an objection. Unluckily, Mrs Porter’s recommendation had transpired, and was become a card-table theme. Nothing can be a secret if my father is to know it, so frank are his communications. We had been unpleasantly conscious of this publicity.

On the message being delivered, sweet Sarah’s serenity became considerably discomposed during a few minutes. “Some natural tears she dropt;” but soon smiled them away. The elements seemed in unison with her feelings; for the sun was just then looking mildly through one of those vernal showers in which the present April has been so rich. Look, love, said I, that calm and gilded rain promises flowers and fruits in abundance; may those kindred tears prepare thy mind, as that shower prepares the earth, for the flowers and fruits of wedded happiness!

I stood by her toilet while she dressed. It was with no particular attention. If she was longer about that operation than usual, it was from absence, not from solicitude. She sighed often; and once or twice exclaimed,—“Ah! Heaven!” in a pensive and languid tone, and with an emphatic shake of the head, as she put on her light hat and ribbands.

“Bless me!” said I, “one would think thou wert adorning a victim, and not a mistress. If that idea has passed across thy mind, prithee, put a stop to this business at once!—Study a pretty harangue of dismissal, full of esteem, wayward heart, and so forth.”

Behold us then in the drawing-room. Every body arrived, except the most interesting among the guests.—A loud rap at the hall door! A deep carmine spread over my Sarah’s cheek, not generally crimson.

Restrained smiles pursed up the face of many a waning virgin of the company, till it looked like a thin pikelet, half toasted.

The drawing-room door opens!—and in rustles, in all the pomp of blue and white tissue and Brussels lace; and with the most satisfied air, our honest friend, Mrs Porter, led by the intended,—a thin, pale personage, somewhat below the middle height, with rather too much stoop in the shoulders, and a little more withered, by Italian suns, than are our English sober bachelors, after an elapse of only forty years, in a black velvet coat, and a waistcoat richly embroidered with coloured flowers upon gold tissue; a bag wig, in crimp buckle, powdered white as the new-shorn fleece.

An unfortunate idea of a mountebank doctor, produced by the black velvet coat and gold waistcoat, gave me some difficulty in managing my risible muscles.

Mr Porter’s features are not irregular; his teeth very fine, though in a mouth which, being rather concave than convex, seldom shews them, and he looks extremely clean. The great desideratum, perceived at first view, is the air of a gentleman, which I have often seen liberally and gracefully diffused about some of our English merchants. It was here in vain to look for it; neither did the tone of his voice, in speaking, please me. These are, in my estimation, most important personalities; mind having so much to do in producing the one, and in harmonizing the other.

You know the Lichfield young women do not play at cards. Six or seven of us were loitering at the windows and round the card-tables,—expectation too busy with us for us to be busy with our needles. The beau was presented by his sister to every one in turn, and judiciously made no particular address to my sister. He said, gallantly enough, that he had pleasure in seeing his native country the richest in beauty of any nation through whose cities he had passed.

Our glowing Nannette was there, with her large and languishing hazle eyes, warm cheek, and the tender fascination of her smile. Eliza W——, in all her acquiline beauty, and with that air of grandeur, though hardly yet sixteen, whose form so often reminds me of a passage in Ossian: “Lovely, with her raven-hair, is the white-bosomed daughter of Sorglan.” She also, whose charms are in their summer-ripeness, whose name seems to have been prophetic of her seldom-equalled beauty, the celebrated Helen White; yet has her cast of countenance more of Raphael’s Madona, than of that less-chastened loveliness with which imagination invests the faithless wife of Menelaus.

Miss A—— also was in the group; of shape correct, and of air sprightly, with my sister, the fair bride-elect, whose form is so light and elegant, whose countenance has so much modest intelligence, and, by her side, Honora, “fresh and beautiful as the young day-star, when he bathes his fair beams in the dews of spring.” Often, when Mr Porter’s attention was otherwise engaged, she looked up in my sister’s face with eyes moistened by solicitous tenderness.

This dear child will not live; I am perpetually fearing it, notwithstanding the clear health which crimsons her cheek and glitters in her eyes. Such an early expansion of intelligence and sensibility partakes too much of the angelic, too little of the mortal nature, to tarry long in these low abodes of frailty and of pain, where the harshness of authority, and the impenetrability of selfishness, with the worse mischiefs of pride and envy, so frequently agitate by their storms, and chill by their damps, the more ingenious and purer spirits, scattered, not profusely, over the earth.

This child seems angel before she is woman; how consummate shall she be if she should be woman before she is actually angel! What delight must then result to me from the consciousness that my sister and myself have been instrumental in the cultivation of talents and of virtues, in which the imagination, the sensibility, and warm disdain of every grovelling propensity, which are, I flatter myself, characteristic of one monitress, shall be united with the sweetness, the unerring discretion, and self-command of the other! She will, by all those who know how to appreciate excellence, be acknowledged, like Miranda, “to have been formed of every creature’s best.”

But how I have wandered from a subject, certainly more important to me at present, even than all the (perhaps) flattering promises which the future makes in the glance, the tear, the smile of my Honora! Yet it is one thing to be important to one’s feelings, and another to bear them away on the light wings of heart-expanding Hope. But descend, thou excursive pen, from these visionary altitudes, upon the firm, though not flowery ground, of this projected marriage!

After tea, Mr Porter talked and attended chiefly to me. Declining cards, and my father and mother engaged in them, it became a duty of politeness to shew attention to some of the family he came to visit. It must have distressed my sister to have been singled out for this purpose. Yet, so prone are folk to gather opinions, as they gather flowers, from the surface, instead of implanting them in their minds, by taking them up from the roots, that I saw in the half-suppressed, but significant smiles of our guests, that they thought the elder sister likely to bear away the Hymeneal wreath from the milder brow of the appointed fair-one.