Ragged and Dangerous. He managed the cause himself with more cleverness than any of his Counsel, and (when found guilty) asked pardon for his plea, and laid it upon the persuasions of his family. Mrs. Shirley (his mother), Lady Huntingdon, and others of the relations were at Court yesterday with a petition for mercy; but on the 5th of May he is to be hanged at Tyburn.

The town are reading the K. of Prussia's poetry, (Le Philosophe sans souci) and I have done like the town; they do not seem so sick of it as I am. It is all the scum of Voltaire and Bolingbroke, the crambe recoctu of our worst Freethinkers, tossed! up in German-French rhyme. Tristram Shandy is still a greater object of admiration, the man as well as the book. One is invited to dinner, where he dines, a fortnight beforehand. His portrait is done by Reynolds, and now engraving. Dodsley gives £700 for a second edition, and two new volumes not yet written; and to-morrow will come out two volumes of Sermons by him. Your friend, Mr. Hall, has printed two Lyric Epistles, one to my Cousin Shandy on his coming to town, the other to the grown gentlewomen, the Misses of York: they seem to me to be absolute madness.

are the best lines in them:

These

And back'd them (their opinions) like such sort of

folks,

With a few stones and a few jokes :

Till weary of their pelting and their prattle,

He ordered out his bears to battle.

It was delightful fun

To see them run

And eat up the young cattle.

The 7th volume of Buffon is come over: do you choose to have it?

Poor Lady Cobham is at last delivered from a painful life. She has given Miss Speed above £30,000.

Mr. Brown is well: I heard from him yesterday, and think of visiting him soon. Mason and Stonehewer are both in town, and (if they were here) would send their best compliments to you and Mrs. Wh" with mine. You see I have left no room for weather, yet I have observed the birth of the Spring, which (though backward) is very beautiful at present. Mind, from this day the thermometer goes to its old place below in the yard, and so pray let its sister do. Mr. Stillingfleet (with whom I am grown acquainted) has convinced me it ought to do Adieu !

So.

XCVI. MR. GRAY TO MR. STONEHEWER.

London, June 29, 1760.

THOUGH you have had but a melancholy employment, it is worthy of envy, and (I hope) will have all the success it deserves.* It was the best and most natural method of cure, and such as could not have been administered by any but your gentle hand. I thank you for communicating to me what must give you so much satisfaction.

I too was reading M. D'Alembert,+ and (like you) am totally disappointed in his Elements. I could only taste a little of the first course: it was dry as a stick, hard as a stone, and cold as a cucumber. But then the letter to Rousseau is like himself; and the Discourses on Elocution, and on the Liberty of Music, are divine. He has added to his translations from Tacitus; and (what is remarkable) though that author's manner more nearly resembles the best French writers of the present age, than any thing, he totally fails in the attempt. Is it his fault, or that of the language?

* Mr. Stonehewer was now at Houghton-le-Spring, in the Bishopric of Durham, attending on his sick father, rector of that parish.-Mason.

+ Two subsequent volumes of his "Melanges de Literature & Philosophie."-Mason.

I have received another Scotch packet with a third specimen, inferior in kind, (because it is merely description) but yet full of nature and noble wild imagination. Five Bards pass the night at the Castle of a Chief (himself a principal Bard); each goes out in his turn to observe the face of things, and returns with an extempore picture of the changes he has seen; it is an October night, (the harvestmonth of the Highlands.) This is the whole plan; yet there is a contrivance, and a preparation of ideas, that you would not expect. The oddest thing is, that every one of them sees Ghosts (more or less). The idea, that struck and surprised me most, is the following. One of them (describing a storm of wind and rain) says

Ghosts ride on the tempest to-night:

Sweet is their voice between the gusts of wind;
Their songs are of other worlds!

Did you never observe (while rocking winds are piping loud) that pause, as the gust is recollecting itself, and rising upon the ear in a shrill and plaintive note, like the swell of an Æolian harp? I do assure you there is nothing in the world so like the voice of a spirit. Thomson had an ear sometimes: he was not deaf to this; and has described it gloriously, but given it another different turn, and of more horror. I cannot repeat the lines: it is in his Winter. There is another very fine picture in one of them. It describes the breaking of the

clouds after the storm, before it is settled into a calm, and when the moon is seen by short intervals.

The waves are tumbling on the lake,

And lash the rocky sides.

The boat is brim-full in the cove,

The oars on the rocking tide.

Sad sits a maid beneath a cliff,
And eyes the rolling stream:
Her lover promised to come,

She saw his boat (when it was evening) on the lake ;
Are these his groans in the gale?

Is this his broken boat on the shore?*

XCVII. MR. GRAY TO DR. WHARTON.

DEAR DOCTOR,

[July, 1760.]

I HEARD yesterday from your old friend Mr. Field, that Mrs. Wharton had brought you a son, and as

The whole of this descriptive piece has been since published in a note to a poem entitled CROMA. (See Ossian's Poems, vol. i. p. 350, 8vo.) It is somewhat remarkable that the manuscript, in the translator's own hand, which 1 have in my possession, varies considerably from the printed copy. Some images are omitted, and others added. I will mention one which is not in the manuscript, the spirit of the mountain shrieks. In the tragedy of Douglas, published at least three years before, I always admired this fine line, the angry spirit of the water shriek'd.-Quere, did Mr. Home take this sublime image from Ossian, or has the translator of Ossian since borrowed it from Mr. Home?-Mason.