24 Nicholson, Hevmns — Nicholson Correspondence. 



Roscoes but I omit no occasion of introducing the subject to them. 

 They expressed great admiration of the poem on the Statue of the 

 Dying Gladiator, but Liverpool has been so convulsed of late by 

 mercantile derangements as very generally to allow no interest in 

 other subjects." 



Then follows a copy of an " ill-natured criticism " of 

 Felicia's poems, which had appeared in the " Annual 

 Review " of 1808. The reviewer acknowledged that " the 

 flow of verse was admirable," that the writer had "an 

 excellent ear," but he thought that " for the present her 

 partial friends would do more wisely in exhorting her to 

 read than in tempting her to write." Mr. Nicholson was 

 grieved to think that this criticism had appeared in a 

 review of which the editor was Arthur Aikin, the nephew 

 of Mrs. Barbauld. But it made no difference to his 

 appreciation of Felicia's poems. " For my own part," he 

 says, " I receive fresh delight on every perusal of your 

 daughter's compositions. The melody of the verse capti- 

 vates on the first perusal, and it is only on often reading 

 them that one finds fresh beauties in the natural and 

 feeling flow of thought, and the correctness of epithet and 

 language, and their perspicuity is singularly characteristic. 

 If we are partial do we not admire the same sort of 

 beauties in some of the poems of Campbell, Rogers, and 

 Pope ? " 



The unfinished letter to Felicia was completed on ist 

 January, 181 1. 



"My Dear Felicia, — 



Mr. Bainbridge would tell you he found me employed in writing 

 to you when he called to announce his immediate departure at least 

 from this neighbourhood, on as stormy an evening as I ever remember. 

 That circumstance induced me to trouble him then with conveying to 

 you even the progress I had made. So I bundled together, a letter to 

 your mother, and parts of two to Harriett and you along with a 

 catalogue of the Liverpool Exhibition of Paintings the whole surround- 

 ing and I hope safely guarding that Eagle's quill which I promised 

 you and which you have led me to hojie shall communicate the effects 



