LETTERS. 251 



sion, demands my best thanks. The fervid patriotism 

 which animates it, would, I think, find an echo in every 

 bosom in England ; and I hope and trust the world has 

 not been deprived of so appropriate an exhortation. I 

 perceive, however, one thing, which is, that your fire has 

 been crampt by the " crambo" of the rhyme, at all times 

 a grievous shackle to poets, and yet capable of such sweet 

 and expressive modulation, as makes us hug our chains, 

 and exult in the hard servitude. My poor neglected 

 muse has lain absolutely unnoticed by me for the last 

 four months, during which period I have been digging 

 in the mines of Scapula for Greek roots ; and, instead, 

 of drinking, with eager delight, the beauties of Virgil, 

 have been cutting and drying his phrases for future use. 

 The place where I live is on the banks of the Humber ; 

 here no Sicilian river, but rough with cold winds, and 

 bordered with killing swamps. AN'hat with neglect, and 

 what with the climate, so congenial to rural meditation, 

 I fear my good Genius, who was wont to visit me with 

 nightly visions " in woods and brakes, and by the river's 

 marge," is now dying of a fen-ague; and I shall thus 

 probably emerge from my retreat, not a hair-brained son 

 of imagination, but a sedate black-lettered book- worm, 

 with a head like an etymologicon magnum. 



Forgive me this flippancy, in which I am not very 

 apt to indulge, and let me offer my best wishes that it 

 is not with your muse as W'ith mine. ELquence has 

 always been thought akin to poetry : though her efforts 

 are not so effectuaJly perpetuated, she is not the less 

 honoured, or her memory the less carefully preserved. 

 Many very plausible hypotheses are contradicted by facts, 

 yet I should imagine that the genius which prompted 

 your " Conspiracy" would be no common basis on which 

 to erect a superstructure of oratorical fame. — " Est enim 

 era tori finitimus Poeta, numeris adstrictior paulo, ver- 

 borum autem licentia liberior, multis vero ornandi gene- 

 ribus socius, ac pene par," &c. You, no doubt, are well 

 acquainted with this passage, in the 1st Dial. D-e Orat., 

 so I shall not go on with it ; but I encourage a hope, 

 tVat I shall one day see a living proof of the truth of 



