Before I had published, I said to myself-You and I, Mr. Cowper, will not concern ourselves much about what the critics may say of our book. But having once sent my wits for a venture, I soon became anxious about the issue, and found that I could not be satisfied with a warm place in my own good graces, unless my friends were pleased with me as much as I pleased myself. Meeting with their approbation, I began to feel the workings of ambition. It is well, said I, that my friends are pleased, but friends are sometimes par. tial; and mine, I have reason to think, are not altogether free from bias. Methinks I should like to hear a stranger or two speak well of me. I was presently gratified by the approbation of the London Magazine, and the Gentleman's, particularly by that of the former, and by the plaudit of Dr. Franklin. By the way, magazines are publications we have but little respect for, till we ourselves are chronicled in them; and then they assume an im. portance in our esteem, which before we could not allow them. But the Monthly Review, the most formidable of all my judges, is still behind. What will that critical Rhadamanthus say, when my shivering genius shall appear before him? Still he keeps me in hot water, and I must wait another month for his award. Alas! when I wish for a favourable sentence from that quarter, (to confess a weakness that I should not confess to all,) I feel myself not a little influenced by a tender regard to my reputation here, even among my neighbours at Olney. Here are watchmakers, who themselves are wits, and who at present, perhaps, think me one. Here is a carpenter, and a baker; and, not to mention others, here is your idol, Mr.

whose smile is fame. All these read the Monthly

Review, and all these will set me down for a dunce, if those terrible critics should show them the exam. ple. But oh! wherever else I am accounted dull, dear Mr. Griffith, let me pass for a genius at Olney.

We are sorry for little William's illness. It is, however, the privilege of infancy to recover, almost immediately, what it has lost by sickness. We are sorry, too, for Mr. 's dangerous condition; but he that is well prepared for the great journey can not enter on it too soon for himself, though his friends will weep for his departure.

Yours,

WM. COWPER.

Wm. Cowper, Esq. to Lady Hesketh.

Olney, April 24, 1786.

YOUR letters are so much my comfort, that I often tremble, lest by any accident I should be disappointed; and the more because you have been, more than once, so engaged in company on the writing day, that I have had a narrow escape. Let me give you a piece of good counsel, my cousin : Follow my laudable example-write when you can; take Time's forelock in one hand and a pen in the other, and so make sure of your opportunity. It is well for me that you write faster than any. body, and more in an hour than other people in two, else I know not what would become of me. When I read your letters, I hear you talk; and I love talking letters dearly, especially from you. Well! the middle of June will not be always a thousand years off; and when it comes I shall hear you, and see you too, and shall not care a farthing then if you do not touch a pen in a month. By

the way, you must either send me or bring me some more paper; for before the moon shall have performed a few more revolutions, I shall not have a scrap left; and tedious revolutions they are just now, that is certain.

I give you leave to be as peremptory as you please, especially at a distance; but when you say that you are a Cowper, (and the better it is for the Cowpers that such you are, and I give them joy of you, with all my heart,) you must not forget, that I boast myself a Cowper too, and have my humours, and fancies, and purposes, and determinations, as well as others of my name, and hold them as fast as they can. You indeed tell me how often I shall see you when you come. A pretty story, truly. I am an he Cowper, my dear, and claim the privileges that belong to my noble sex. But these matters shall be settled, as my cousin Agamemnon used to say, at a more convenient time.

I shall rejoice to see the letter you promise me; for though I met with a morsel of praise last week, I do not know that the week current is likely to produce me any; and having lately been pretty much pampered with that diet, I expect to find myself rather hungry by the time when your next letter shall arrive. It will therefore be very oppor tune. The morsel above alluded to, came fromwhom do you think? From but she desires that her authorship may be a secret. And in my answer I promised not to divulge it, except to you. It is a pretty copy of verses, neatly written, and well turned; and when you come, you shall see them. I intend to keep all pretty things to myself till then, that they may serve me as a bait to lure you here more effectually. The last letter that I

had from

I received so many years since, that it seems as if it had reached me a good while before I was born.

I was grieved at the heart that the general could not come, and that illness was in part the cause that hindered him. I have sent him, by his express desire, a new edition of the first book, and half the second. He would not suffer me to send it to you, my dear, lest you should post it away to Maty at once. He did not give that reason, but being

shrewd I found it.

The grass begins to grow, and the leaves to bud, and everything is preparing to be beautiful against you come. Adieu!

You inquire of our walks, I perceive, as well as our rides. They are beautiful. You inquire also concerning a cellar. You have two cellars. Oh! what years have passed since we took the same walks, and drank out of the same bottle! But a few weeks more, and then!

WM. COWPER.

Dr. Franklin to Miss Stevenson.

Craven Street, June 17, 1767.

WE were greatly disappointed yesterday, that we had not the pleasure, promised us, of our dear Polly's company.

Your good mother would have me write a line in answer to your letter. A muse, you must know, visited me this morning! I see you are surprised, as I was. I never saw one before-and shall never see another, so I took the opportunity of her help to put the answer into verse, because I was some verse in your debt ever since you sent me the last pair of garters.

I sup

This muse appeared to be no housewife. Is pose few of them are. She was dressed (if the expression is allowable) in an undress, a kind of slatternly negligé, neither neat and clean, nor well made; and she has given the same sort of dress to my piece. On reviewing it, I would have reformed the lines, and made them all of a length, as I am told lines ought to be; but I find I can't lengthen the short ones without stretching them on the rack, and I think it would be equally cruel to cut off any part of the long ones. Besides, the superfluity of these makes up for the deficiency of those; and so, from a principle of justice, I leave them at full length, that I may give you, at least in one sense of the word, good measure.

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Adieu, my dear good girl, and believe me ever Your affectionate, faithful friend,

B. FRANKLIN.

Dr. Beattie to Robert Arbuthnot, Esq.

Aberdeen, December 12, 1763.

SINCE you left us, I have been reading Tasso's 'Jerusalem," in the translation lately published by Hoole. I was not a little anxious to peruse a poem which is so famous over all Europe, and has so often been mentioned as a rival to the "Iliad," "Eneid," and "Paradise Lost." It is certainly a noble work; and though it seems to me to be inferior to the three poems just mentioned, yet I can not help thinking it in the rank next to these. As for the other modern attempts at the "Epopée," the "Henriade" of Voltaire, the "Epigoniad" of Wilkie, the "Leonidas" of Glover, not to mention he "Arthur" of Blackmore, they are not to be compared with it. Tasso possesses an exuberant