LETTER TO MR STRAHAN. 413 



It is the groundwork of all social pleasures, and the 

 chief promoter of individual happiness ; and it is the 

 more to be esteemed that it makes its home alike in 

 the heart of the labourer and of the lord, binding 

 all congenial spirits together by its sweet and mys- 

 terious influences. I am deeply interested in your 

 welfare, and I feel sure that your industry will insure 

 you success, and gain you a name among the authors 

 of your country. It will give me great pleasure to see and 

 know this. I am not a little proud of the opinion which 

 you have expressed regarding my pieces ; an encomium 

 pronounced by one of your taste and judgment weighs 

 against the censure of a thousand, who, in their ignor- 

 ance, prattle of such matters.' 



TO MR STRAHAN. 



' This is not the first time I take up the pen to write 

 to a poet. I had a friend, not many years ago, who also 

 had learned the art unteachable ; and whose heart was 

 as warm as his imagination was active. He is now no 

 more. Since his death the place he occupied in my 

 affections has remained a blank ; and part of the pleasure 

 I derive from your kind letter arises from the hope of 

 having that blank filled. The life of the friend I allude 

 to was one of melancholy and disappointment. He 

 possessed no ordinary powers ; but from an unfortunate 

 diffidence which was, I believe, constitutional to him, he 

 almost always despaired of attaining the object he pur- 

 sued, when every other person who could judge of the 

 matter deemed him just on the point of gaining it. The 

 consequence was that he failed in almost everything he 

 attempted, and that, though endowed with a fine genius 

 for both painting and poetry, he gained not a modicum 



