concerning anything he has written, if it were even but a paragraph in a newspaper), that if one sarcastic or condemnatory sentence is softened and neutralized, it will be so much spoiled, not simply in respect of writing, but of justice. Better turned sarcasms or censures may be easily invented, but if the writing is reduced out of satire and out of censure, it is destroyed as a review.

The Eclectic wants a greater proportion of this class of writing; I do not say like my specimens, but of this general quality. There are a good many exceptions, and I verily believe these are from the pen of the editor; but the greater part falls under the heavy censure of literary men (without whose approbation no literary work can prosper), as defective in spirit, freedom, and poignancy. I have heard a good many of them talk of the subject; and what they say is, that the Review dares nothing; that its highest ambition seems to be to do no harm; that it. takes the style of a puritan divine in some instances where that of Voltaire would be better; that it is too anxious to preserve a quiet impunity under the wings of orthodoxy and loyalty; that it is like a dog that has been whipped, and therefore but just ventures to growl, and then runs away . . . &c., &c.

I should not forget to allude to the parts of the article in question which relate to the pecuniary assistance deemed necessary to Dr. Beattie, and to the niece of Mrs. Cockburn, and these passages ought to be bitter, whether they are or not. Nothing can possibly be too acrid for the occasions. One recollects the cases of Burns, Bloomfield, &c., but those in question are much more legitimate cases for the lash.

Here is a man of moderate, economical, prudent habits; a deep student, a diligent lecturer, an useful writer, and an amiable man; who is in circumstances hardly affording, or securing the permanence of, the comforts of life; and there are a very great number of affluent, literary, titled, and most affectionate dear friends, and Sir William among them, who are wishing, and wishing, and wishing that some little matter could be done for him, while they are rolling, many of them, in luxury and splendor. That his delicacy would not have refused their generosity, is evident from the animated gratitude he expressed for Mrs. Montague's hint. And here again is a desolate widow of extraordinary worth and endowments, who is actually known to, and visited by a great number of persons of distinction, and particularly the Duchess of Gordon, who yet lives dozens of years in a state next to absolute want; and yet these persons' knowing her is mentioned by Sir W. with the utmost complacency!!! Now if a Review can pass quietly over all this as all very good and pretty, or just only make some innocent, insipid remark upon it, that Review deserves to perish. I have no more to add, but that having thus told my mind, I shall not make the slightest complaint, whatever alteration is made, and that I remain,

LXI. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES.

Frome, January 21, 1807.

I am writing to Paternoster Row for a whole set of the Edinburgh Review. It is a work essential to the library of a literary man. My own experiments in reviewing make me more distinctly feel the measure of talent evinced in that work; a work, though, of very bad tendency as to religion.

. . . You saw the stupid article about the Essays in the Monthly Review. . . . . The Edinburgh will not take any notice. I have been struck at seeing how much the truth of the last essay is evinced by the very manner in which all the Reviews, excepting the one or two specifically religious, have noticed that essay. Even the candid and plausible ones have considered it as the worst part of the book,-a kind of appendage of subordinate material which had better have been omitted. For the last three months nearly, I have been keeping myself to work with great seclusion, and a tolerable degree of application, a very meritorious application, since it has been a dogged self-compulsion; for all the labor has been invità Minerva. Yes, I have almost every day felt it an ungracious and unsuccessful task,-ungracious in a great measure from its being unsuccessful. Almost the only exception to this description was in one or two of the days in which I wrote the critique on Sir W. Forbes, which I did with a facility which I have never felt since. In part I attribute the sterility and inert cast of thought to the dreary influence of winter; and I am warranted to do this, from having always felt this effect of this influence since I had anything to do with studying and writing. Johnson may say what he pleases, but I know, and have long known, as to myself, that there is a very great difference, in the powers of imagination at least, between winter and the spring and autumn. On this account I regretted that my London dissipation should fall in such a way as to alienate the finest part of autumn from the business of composition. The two or three first weeks after my return hither I felt the most extreme repugnance to go to work, and had also, as another prevention, a number of visits to make. After these two or three thus spent, I flagellated myself in great anger, and drove myself to work, and have kept at it ever since, with the occasional interruption of a day, which has been lost, perhaps, from some visiting person spoiling the morning, which, during these short days, is incomparably the best part. By sheer hard labor I have worked out perhaps twice as much as I ever did within the same number of weeks before, but hardly one page has appeared to me to be done well. I have worked under the feeling that I must not wait for more auspicious times, but, good or bad, must absolutely produce something. The subject also is unfavorable,* as being of a wide and common-place nature, just as well admitting one thing to be said as another, and all resting on a few main principles, so

*On the Improvement of Time.

perfectly trite and obvious, that it is excessively difficult to give the smallest appearance of point or novelty. As to fine figures, not one of them ever comes near me. I never before thought and wrote so much with half so few images. The utility of the business will be the only consolation. Of that I cannot altogether fail. There is no hope of getting to an end in less than three months; for the truth is that I had written hardly anything before I returned hither from London. A number of sheets full of mere topics and hints indeed, but no composition. I see no chance that the thing will be much less than the whole of the four essays together.

LXII. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES.

Frome, March 12, 1807.

My having transferred my residence to a different house, together with a deluge of new entertainment rushing upon me in the form of the Edinburgh Review, and several other things, has made a deplorable chasm in my sentence-making for more than a month past. But I must and will be at it again from this day forward. I am quite ashamed to see how much the days are lengthened since I did anything material to the business. It will not, however, be quite in vain to have read a large portion of this terrible Review; a work probably superior to everything of the kind for the last century, everything since Bayle's time. I read it with abhorrence of its tendency as to religion, but with admiration of everything else. It cannot fail to have a very great effect on the literary world, by imperiously requiring a high style of intellectual performance, and setting the example. It is most wonderful how a parcel of young men have acquired such extensive and accurate knowledge and such a firm, disciplined, unjuvenile habit of thinking and composing. But I shall not be made to believe that they have not an old fox or two among them. Yet they all admirably support the general level of able performance. The belles-lettres critics seem to be stocked with logic as well as principles of taste, and the scientific critics to be fraught with satire as well as definitions. Either their modesty or their pride keeps them almost clear of any direct attention to theology, but their incidental references are detestable and pernicious. It may not seem very consistent after this to insist, that you must have this work, from the beginning, and so must or ought every other intellectual and literary man: he cannot pretend to have a competent library without it.

LXIII. TO JOSEPH COTTLE, ESQ.

[In answer to an invitation to meet S. T. Coleridge.]

Frome, June, 1807.

MY DEAR SIR, I am very unfortunate in having made an engagement

two or three weeks back, to go just at this time on a very particular occasion, to a distant place in this county, and therefore being deprived of the very high luxury to which you so kindly invite me. I shall be unavoidably detained, for a very considerable time, and my imagination will strongly represent to me the pleasure and advantage of which an inevitable necessity deprives me. But I will indulge the hope, that I shall some time be known to Mr. Coleridge, under more favorable circumstances in a literary respect, than I can at present, after a regular application to the severer order of studies shall in some measure have retrieved the consequences of a very loose and indolent intellectual discipline, and shall have lessened a certain feeling of imbecility which always makes me shrink from attempting to gain the notice of men whose talents I admire.

No man can feel a more animated admiration of Mr. Coleridgs than I have retained ever since the two or three times tha^. I was a little while in his company; and during his absence in the soul and the east, I have very often thought with delight of the immense acquisitions which he would at length bring back to enrich the works which I trust the public will ir due time receive from him, and to which it has an imperious claim. And still I trust he will feel the solemn duty of making his very best and continued efforts to mend as well as delight mankind, now that he has attained the complete mastery and expansion of his admirable powers. You do not fail, I hope, to urge him to devote himself strenuously to literary labor. He is able to take a station amongst the most elevated ranks, either of the philosophers or the poets. Pray tell me what are his immediate intentions, and whether he has any important specific undertaking in hand. For the sake of elegant literature, one is very glad that he has had the opportunity of visiting those most interesting scenes and objects which you mention. Will you express to him in the strongest terms my respect, and my animated wishes for his health, his happiness, and his utility. You can inform me what is the nature of that literary project to which you allude. Tell me also, what is the state and progress of your own literary projects, and I hope I may say labors.

I behaved shabbily about some slight remarks which I was to have ventured on Mr. Southey's Madoc. On reading the critiques of the Edinburgh Review on Thalaba and Madoc, I found what were substantially my own impressions, so much better developed than I could have done, that I instantly threw my remarks away. Let me hear from you when you have half an hour of leisure, and believe me to be with every kind remembrance to your most excellent family, my dear sir,

Most cordially yours,

JOHN FOSTER.

LXIV. TO MRS. R. MANT.

Frome, July 18, 1807.

In the article of society, I know you are unfortunate, and have long been so. Even if the persons near you would be friendly, they would yield you but a very defective satisfaction; their tastes are in general so very different from yours. Though you would sometimes be gay, you would not be frivolous, and though you would be gay sometimes, yet you would wish to be often serious. . . . . A time will come, when you will know why it was appointed you to walk to a better state and better society through a path so desolate and solitary. That it is appointed by infinite wisdom and goodness your faith is well assured, though it is perhaps unavoidable for the heart sometimes to feel sad. Women that pass through life without forming any domestic connections are sometimes, perhaps generally, left more solitary than others when they advance towards its latter part. But yet, what circumstances of vexation and wretchedness they escape. This remark I am led to make by a fact that has happened in this town this very morning. A middleaged woman, a widow; who has always borne a respectable character, has cut her throat, and is dead, owing, it is said, to the vexation occasioned her by two wicked sons. Think of this, my dear friend, and consider how much better is a situation like yours, in a social respect, than one so miserable as to lead to such a catastrophe. I could wish you, what perhaps you cannot have, excellent, cheerful, and social friends; but I still more wish you, what you can have, much of the society of that supremely beneficent Being, whɔ is able to make you a compensation, both here and hereafter, for all that he at present sees it proper to refuse you. Let me once again exhort you, while I would admonish myself also, to be much in the exercise of making your requests known to the Almighty. It is the greatest of all consolations upon earth. . . . My father and mother are still living, but very infirm; the former being I believe as much as eighty-two years of age, and the latter about seventy-five. My brother, who is a number of years younger than myself, has three or four children.

....

...

LXV. TO THE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES.

Frome, January, 1808.

MY DEAR FRIEND,-. I am sitting in the midst of authors, in the office of Minos; a pack of scoundrels they are; infidels to a nan, both small and great. Just now I am about the vile pamphlet of Scott Waring (as I am told), called "Observations," &c. I repeat to you, this is a most excellent mode of mental and preparatory exercise; and I feel very sensibly that I acquire a stronger hand, and a more comprehensive view, by means of it. Once more, therefore, I exhort you to