60th page, the epithet to the hand of the morning, which was "red hand," is judiciously exchanged to fair-for a ludicrous equivoque is very undesirable. Nor am I less glad that tender, as applied to the yell of the young Upases, is altered to shriller. Above all, I rejoice that you have yielded to my persuasions, and rescued Ninon from the injustice you had done to her charms, by the epithet withered, and to her merits by that of harlot. Ninon had solid and generous virtues, to balance her amorous frailty, and, though not always constant, was at no time indiscriminately licentious. Never, surely, was a striking and tragic incident so finely told, in so short a compass, as you have now told it.

I am not aware of any alteration in the second canto.

In the third, we are infinitely indebted to the Orchis, whose description has given birth to a simile of such perfect beauty, and to a pathetic story, told in your own wonderfully picturesque manner; yet is it not unphilosophical to mention the echoes of canvas walls, where no echo can in reality exist? Is it not false metaphor, to talk of the beating of an urn? And do you not, in the babe's bloody fingers, present an image, whose horror passes the bounds you prescribe to the excitement of that passion in the notes.

In the fourth canto, I do not see why the epithet calm, expressing the serene faith of the salamander cousins, Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, was exchanged for slow, which expresses nothing of their intellectual feelings.

The portrait of the Cannabis is introduced by a fine landscape of China, and is in itself animated and graceful in the first degree. That allusion, which succeeds to the allegoric tissue of life, opens with a new and solemn idea, and beautifully brightens on its progress.

We find the Ocyma a great poetic acquisition; the description it introduces of Lot's wife is much improved, and its interest much heightened from the passage where we found her statue in the saline city, amidst the mines of Poland. People would be apt to wonder "how the d--l it got there." I confess, however, that I do not quite like that Lota should so distinctly perceive her own odd destiny. The preceding description of the ice-flower, forms a couplet that has no superior in grace and beauty, through this whole poem, where grace and beauty are so bounteously bestowed.

Rejoicing most truly in your poetic glories, I remain, dear Sir, your obliged friend and servant,

LETTER XCI.

HUMPHRY REPTON, ESQ.

Feb. 17, 1790.

FOR one of the most ingenious, easy, witty, graceful letters I ever received, it was my hope and expectation to have thanked you in person ere this time; but our strangely softened winter is passing swiftly away; December, the promising December, is already past, and you, or let me rather say the arbitrary claims of your new profession, made its pinion faithless. It shed mild gales, and light, which, while it lasted, was almost vernal; but it shed not effusions from the eye and spirit of my friend, which had been yet more welcome.

The glowing pages before me abound with Claude and Salvatorial sketches. My imagination eagerly fills up the outlines. Nor less was I pleased with the Alderman's Eden, his canal upon the hill, and the mount in the valley; but, as you observe, where the grass looks green and lawny, the water glitters, and the trees grow luxuriantly, the vulgar eye is sufficiently gratified.

Ah! while you sport thus enchantingly with the elements of an art so dear to me, that you should dream I could call or think you pedantic! Surely there can on no subject be pedantry upon which we descant, to those who understand, and who listen to us with pleasure!

I rejoice in the success of your new profession; that your talents have, at length, struck into a track which calls forth all their strong and brilliant powers. In this track the wealthy and the vain will seek them out, employ and reward them;-because it is there that such beings can gild themselves with lustres reflected from the poet's fancy and the painter's eye, which, in the coy bowers of abstract literature, had administered little to their cravings.

Chatsworth is my native soil-the first scene of rural grandeur that met my infant eyes. It is only five miles distant from the village in which we lived during my childhood. With my father's friend, the then clergyman of Edengor, and afterterwards Dean of Rapho in Ireland, we used to pass a frequent week, and the splendours of the Chatsworth scenery gratified my young admiration, beneath morning, noon-tide, and evening suns. I soon discerned capabilities in the magnificent situation of which the possessor had not, nor has yet, availed himself; and I exult that the

genius of the groves resigns his wand to your guidance. That forced and formal cascade, in which the sullen waters take their measured leaps, always offended me. If the penurious Naiad suffers not their descent to be more than temporary, surely they might yet be allowed to strike the eye with transient sublimity, and roar adown the mountain over craggy fragments, and flash through intercepting bushes.

You ask me after Zeluco. I read it, because I know its very ingenious and excellent author; else have I an absolute horror at the idea of wasting my time upon modern novels. Divine Richardson's works have made me hard to be pleased with imaginary histories. Zeluco, however, is of superior stamina to most of its brethren of this era; the characters are forcibly drawn, though we find not much grace of style. I confess it does not strike me with objection, that the leading character is so darkly coloured. The warninglights flash upon morality through the clouds of vice, with effect perhaps more striking than from amidst the serene atmosphere of the pattern heroes. Zeluco is the Macbeth of modern novels, allowing for the transcendent superiority in point of genius, that must be acceded to the dramatic writer.

Have you read one of my darling books-the