rounds Ludlow. With all my passion for winding rivers, curtained rocks, devious vallies, and sheltering mountains, I am too indolent to search for them in distant parts of the kingdom, without the stimulus of friendship. Never did hart pant for the water-brooks more than I long for quiet exemption from intellectual as well as bodily exertions. - I was much amused by your account of Miss , that being, whose brain seems, from your description, a whirlpool, the eddies of which have opposite currents, hurrying the ideas that enter it different ways; but whose virtues are as steady as her thoughts are confused and veering. talks methodistically; but And so Mr he was born to be what he has always been, "Every thing by starts, and nothing long." Jacob's description of Reuben may be applied to him, "Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.” How much the reverse of such a wandering fire is the light of her mind whom I have now the pleasure of addressing! LETTER LXVI. WILLIAM HAYLEY, Esq. Lichfield, July 15, 1787. THANK you, my dear bard, for your letter, however short; and assure yourself, that I am highly obliged by your kind present of the admirable little volume on Chesterfield and Johnson. A letter, lately received from Miss H. Williams, mentions it in the most glowing terms of approbation. This letter preceded the arrival of the work itself a few days. The grace, the spirit, the discriminating justice which breathe through its pages, more than fulfil her animated testimony. Well does she observe, that it is impossible to mistake the author, though the work is nameless. You must learn to write below yourself, to veil those rays of imagination, wit, and knowledge, Entitled "Two Dialogues, containing a comparative view of the Lives, Characters, and Writings of Philip, the late Earl of Chesterfield, and Dr Samuel Johnson." Printed for Ca dell in the Strand, 1787.-S. which illuminate your writings, or it will always be in vain that you write anonymously. The dialogue appears to me, in general, as just as it is eloquent. We find the author putting forth equally the full strength of argument in each disputant, alike when, in the character of the Arch-Deacon, he expresses the erroneous ideas of Johnson's nearly faultless merit as a moral and religious man; and when, in that of the Colonel, he combats and disarms the fallacy. The want of this fairness has generally disgusted me with dialogues, where one of the parties never say half that might be said in defence of their opinion, and only speak to be confuted. The Arch-Deacon says, and finely says, every thing that can possibly be suggested to support the imaginary moral perfection of this great literary idol; yet, perhaps, not all that might be said for him as a poet. Since it is confessed that there is poetry, though not pathos in the Irene, surely no fair conclusion can be drawn from its failure on the stage against the poetic talents of its author. We must all feel, that without the aid of music, Sampson Agonistes would, in representation, have little effect on the passions of the audience; and if any judgment may be formed from translations, the celebrated trage dies of Sophocles and Euripides are cold as the Irene. Entirely do I believe, that the pride of Johnson, wounded by the ill success of that work, was the reason why he did not often throw the splendours of his imagination into verse. Nor less is it probable, that this mortification whetted the fangs of his envy against the whole poetic race. It is, with exact veracity, asserted by the Colonel, in this dialogue, that Johnson had no empire over the risible ideas, through the course of his compositions. That, in conversation, he was by no means deficient in that power, the colloquial records of that wonderful man bear ample testimony. But, totally forsaking his pen, from which also scarce any thing pathetic ever descended, he certainly could never have been esteemed a great dramatic writer, amongst a people accustomed to the wit, the humour, and spirit of Shakespeare, and to the impassioned tenderness of Otway. But then, it is only over the gay and the commiserating sensations of his readers that Johnson wanted empire. The assertion, therefore, appears to me too general, that he had no dominion over the passions; and that the simile of a king without subjects cannot strictly be applicable to him. That, as a poet, he is able to rouse and fire, though not to exhilarate and melt the soul, his character of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, in the Vanity of Human Wishes, bears resistless proof. If want of the pathetic powers necessarily render a man a "miserable poet," I apprehend Juvenal, and even Pindar, resign their laurels, since scholars tell me there is not a gleam of pathos in all their writings... Johnson's Satires prove that he had nervous and harmonious versification at command. The Colonel grants him a quick and vigorous imagination, elevated sentiments, striking imagery, and splendid language. Of the author who possessed those great essentials, it is surely not too much to say that he might, had he chosen it, have been perpetually a poet—a stern and gloomy one certainly; but yet a poet, a sublime poet, however the want of tender sensibilities might have closed all the pathetic avenues against his muse. I think it possible to make fine poems of most of the Ramblers, were they put into equally good verse with Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes; yet I know not if verse could improve them. You are conscious how warm an admirer I have ever been of his best style in prose; that, for abstract disquisition, I think it not only nervous, |