I pour on that extended hand, once more warm with life! with what unutterable delight did I lift the tea, and bits of toast to his lips! When he had eaten his breakfast with liking and appetite, and was laid down again to dose, I learnt the particulars of this miraculous revival. His attendants said that he remained, in the state in which I left him, till between five and six, when, on giving him the wine, they perceived he swallowed it, though without moving his limbs, or opening his eyes. On repeating it, the next half hour, he expressed unwillingness to take it, and, lifting up his hand, tried to push it from him. However they persuaded, or rather half-forced him to take it. On the next attempt of that sort he opened his eyes, and said, with tolerable distinctness,"No, no, not wine-tea, and bread and butter;" but they now, without attempting force, persuaded him to drink the wine, assuring him that he should have his breakfast the instant it could be procured. One of them ran up in that moment to impart the glad tidings to me. He has continued slowly to amend from that time. His appetite is returned, and he sits up some hours every day in his arm-chair, and can converse a little himself, with some wanderings, that shew impaired memory rather than deranged intellect. He attends with pleasure to what we say, and read, to amuse him. I am happier than I can express, though it is an apprehensive and tremulous delight. But my friend, what a resurrection at seventyeight! Dr Jones is astonished, and says he shall never again despair while he sees a patient respire. My thankfulness to that heaven, which has thus restored to my fond cares their thrice dear object, is boundless. O! that it may long be mine to screen his helpless age from every want, and every annoyance ! There is exquisite pathos in the just, though melancholy light in which you place the disadvantage of possessing a mind refined and exalted; so far beyond the class of beings with whom it is your fate to live. I wish that you had in your vicinity two or three friends, who could value your talents, and partake your sentiments, "Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire, But as at present this must not be, I conjure you to avoid, as much as possible, fruitless longings, and to reflect that it may not be always thus ;that, by the cultivation of your naturally fine ta lents, by the ideas your industry is every day accumulating from those silent, but unfailing friends, your books; you are laying up a stock of information, knowledge, science, and reasoning powers, which may one day render you the delight of people who shall better know and feel your value. Even should this never happen, should your expansive and expanded mind fade, as it has bloomed, in an intellectual desert, it cannot but be grateful in the sight of him, who endowed your spirit with uncommon gifts, that no indolence, or neglect on your part have rendered his bounty vain. And since you have added piety, and moral virtue, to mental industry, be assured that you have increased in your immortal soul its capacity of happiness against its entrance into that house, in which there are many mansions, and where, though all who are admitted shall be happy; there will be in that happiness very wide degrees. Thank you for your mineral intelligence, unwelcome as in itself it proves. The value of Eyam living to my father, once near 7001. per annum, is not now more than 1501. So sink deeper and deeper, from year to year, our golden hopes in this watery mischief. Adieu! LETTER L. GEORGE HARDINGE, ESQ. Lichfield, Dec. 20, 1786. I SEE you are displeased with me, for the perhaps too ingenuous manner in which I have combated the prejudices that govern your criticisms. You say I want temper in argument. It certainly exhausts my patience to see a man of ability, with an air of unappealable decision, perpetually pronouncing in modern poets that to be obscure, which is clear as day-light; if the language is elevated, calling it stiff and stilted; while, if simplicity be the character of the passage, he terms it heavy, mean, and prosaic. In your observations upon Mason's, Hayley's, the Bard of Derby's, and even upon my much inferior compositions, I cannot guess at the ideas which stimulate your censure, or inspire your praise; because the passages you commend, in our separate writings, appear to me no way superior to those you condemn. I am still sure of the fact, that where Milton and Shakespeare mean to describe, they use epithets quite as lavishly as our best moderns*. The passages you quote to oppose my assertion are merely colloquial and narrative. It would be a fine opiate truly to read a descriptive poem, in which the author should talk of hills, and vallies, and rocks, and seas, and streams, and youths, and nymphs, without giving us the picturesque noun-adjective, which alone conveys to us any distinct idea, what sort of hill, and valley, rock, ocean, stream, youth, or maid, he means to place before us. I was reading Henry the sixth yesterday, without any design of searching for added instances to prove a truth so self-evident, as that picture and appropriation in general depend upon the epithet. That is not one of Shakespeare's best plays, and though generally natural, and therefore interesting, though it contains much good sense, and strong characteristic strokes, it has certainly less poetry than most of his other dramas; yet in the poetic, or even in the impassioned passages, mark how the epithets pour in! "Wizards know their time, Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night." * "So also does Homer, whether viewed in his Grecian, or English dress."-S. |