CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS FAMILY. 107 



sign ; and this secret will make your lines bold and nervous. 

 There are also in poetry allusions, similes, and a thousand 

 nameless graces, the efficacy of which nothing can make you 

 sensible of but the careful reading of our best poets, and a 

 nice and judicious application of their beauties. I need not 

 add that you should be careful to seem not to take any pains 

 about your rhimes ; they should fall in, as it were, of them- 

 selves. Our old poets laboured as much formerly to lug in 

 two rhiming words as a butcher does to drag an ox to be 

 slaughtered ; but Pope has set such a pattern of ease in that 

 way, that few composers now are faulty in the business of 

 rhiming. 



When I have the pleasure of meeting you, we will talk 

 over these and many other matters too copious for an 

 Epistle. 



Yours affectionately. 



GIL. WHITE. 



LETTER VI11. 



TO MRS. BARKER. 



London, Nov. 26, 1774. 

 DEAR SISTER, 



I HAVE been indebted to you for some time in the letter way; 

 but as I have lately written to Sam, I was in hopes that a 

 letter to one of the family would express my regard for the 

 whole, and excuse my other obligations for a time. My busi- 

 ness in town is to meet my Bro. John, and to bring up Jack, 

 who is grown so tall and large that it is full time that he was 

 settled in the world. 



Originally I intended to have met Bro. J. in town, and to 

 have accompanied him to Blackburn, and so to have spent the 

 winter between that place and Lyndon ; but just as I thought 

 I had at last procured help for my church, my assistant was 

 called into Devon, to return he knows not when : " ibi omnis 



