ror. } 
to breeders in the neighbourhood, within 
fifteen. or twenty miles of Bromfgrove. 
In addition to this, I think it right to add, 
that every theep was bond fide fold to the 
higheft bidder ; that Ia&tually recetved the 
fum fated; and, laftly, that there was not 
a fincle bidding on my account by any 
perfon whatever. 
Bromferove, 
Feb. 12, 180%. 
Tam Sir, &c. 
J. TWAMLEY. 
Io the Editor of the Monthly Magazime. 
es 
HOPE you will excufe my beginning 
I this letter with a copy of ver/es which 
have been printed againeand again, and 
are in every one’s mouth: but you will 
perceive that they are neceflarily to be re- 
peated once more, as a text for’ what fol- 
lows. 
that in Gray’s Elegy ina Country Church- 
yard it is thus written :— 
‘¢ Perhaps in this negleéted fpot is laid 
Some heart once pregnant with celeftial fire: 
Hands that the rod of empire might have 
{wayd, 
Or wak’d to ecftacy the living lyre. 
But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page, 
Rich with the fpoils of time, did ne’er 
unrol : 
Chill Penury reprefs’d their noble rage, 
And froze the genial current of the foul. 
Full many a gem of pureft ray ferene 
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear ; 
Full many a flow’r is-born to bluth unfeen, 
And wafte its fweetneis in the defart air. 
Some village Hampden, that with dauntlefs 
breaft 
The little tyrant of his fields with{tood : 
Some mute inglorious Milton here may reft: 
Some Cromwell guiltlefs of his country’s 
blood.” 
Thefe verfes, Mr. Editor, were perufed 
by me very early in life, and have left an 
impreffion which I verily think can never 
be effaced by time or chance. My admi- 
ration of geniujes has always been fervent. 
I imbibed it from intancy, and to this 
day I cannot behold a genius without 
feeling a cértain kind of awe, as in the 
prefence of a fuperior-being. Judge then 
what my fentiments were, when [ learned 
that fo many great geniutes are buried in 
cbfcurity. It was this unhappy circum- 
fiance in the fate of eminent talents which 
firft induced- me to fix my refidence in the 
metropolis, net merely as the feat of learn- 
ing, but upon the fair principles of caleu- 
lation. £ concluded that where the 
greateft number of men are gathered to- 
gether, there mult be the greateft number 
Genius in Obfcurity detected. 
It is almoft fuperfluous to add, 
315 
of geniufes, as the lottery-office-keeper 
who fells the moft tickets ‘has a chance of 
felling the moft prizes. Had there been 
any city that contained a greater number 
of inhabitants, although not the metro- 
polis, and although there had been neither 
a king ner a book(feller init, I-fhould have 
fixed in that city upon the fame principle. 
When, therefore, I came to refide in 
London, I fondly imagined that my fa- 
-vourite predilection for geniufes would be 
gratified by the recurrence of a perpetuad 
variety of celeberrimi eruditifiim et peritiffi- 
mi, et in omnibus artibus hterisque facile 
principes ; but I had not made fuch emz- 
nence my purluit long, before I difcovered 
too much reafon to lamert, with the Poet, 
that ‘chill penury’’? which turns fomany 
men out of their proper ftations in this 
life, and fills them with others poflefled of 
no more talents than an zguoramus jury. 
My experience has fince added many a fad 
confirmation of this fact, and has often 
induced me to complain of an order of 
things, or a conflitution of fociety, whith 
excludes fo many bright geniufes from the 
profits of their natural talents. . Alas! 
Mr. Editor, the §* dark unfathom’d 
caves,’ and ‘neglected fpots,’” men- 
tioned by Mr. Gray, are neither more or 
lefs than the little courts and dirty allies of 
‘the metropolis, where our ‘* village Hamp- 
dens’’ are weighing “groceries, and our 
*¢ inglorious Miltons’* are tagging laces. 
The **defart air’? where our hiftorians, 
poets, and” philofophers, ‘* wafte their 
fweetnefs,” are the fhopboards, ware-~ 
houfes, and pitehing-blocks, of this mafs 
of fin and fea-coal forin fuch ‘neglected 
fpots”’ have I often, by a talent for refearch 
peculiar to mylelf, difcovered the feeds 
and germs of ail thofe diftinguifhed cha- 
raécters. 
Can I then forbear fuch plaintive medi- 
tations as thefe? What a vile and ungrate- 
ful world we live in, which fuppreffes, 
comprefics, keeps down, confines, and 
buries fo many talents and fo much genius! 
What better are we than the unhappy 
wretches who commit child-murther left 
their offspring fhould rife up to fhame’ 
them? What are our orders in foctety, 
our wealth, ‘our ranks, our dignities, our 
privileges, and our titles, but fo many 
medicines, taken to procure the abortion of 
genius? And who and what am I who 
have been employed fo mary years in 
finding out geniufes, in dogging them to 
their garrets, their workhoufes, and their 
cells, and bringing them to the bookfel- 
ers, but afort of police-officer bringing 
the bodies of hopeful babes, deferted b¥ 
Sfe their 
