hardly listen to a concert for two hours, though he could play on an instrument all day long. The chase, we know, has always been the favourite amusement of kings and nobles. Not only fame and fortune, but pleasure is to be earned.

Efforts, it must not be forgotton, are as indispensable as desires. The globe is not to be circumnavigated by one wind. We should never do nothing. "It is better to wear out than to rust out," says Bishop Cumberland. "There will be time enough for repose in the grave," said Nicole to Pascal. In truth, the proper rest for man is change of occupation.

As a young man, you should be mindful of the unspeakable importance of early industry, since in youth habits are easily formed, and there is time to recover from defeats. An Italian sonnet justly, as well as elegantly compares procrastination to the folly of a traveller who pursues a brook till it widens into a river and is lost in the sea. The toils as well as risks of an active life are commonly overrated, so much may be done by the diligent use of ordinary opportunities; but they must not always be waited for. We must not only strike the iron while it is hot, but strike it till "it is made hot."

Herschel the great astronomer declares that ninety or one hundred hours, clear enough for observations, cannot be called an unproductive year.

The lazy, the dissipated, and the fearful, should patiently see the active and the bold pass them in the course. They must bring down their pretensions to the level of their talents. Those who have not energy to work must learn to be humble, and should not vainly hope to unite the incompatible enjoyments of indolence and enterprise, of ambition and self-indulgence. I trust that my young friend will never attempt to reconcile them.

TO THE SAME.

London, February 4, 1808.

I AM glad to hear of your gaining the prize; and, to say the truth, I am better pleased that you owe it to your proficiency in Latin prose than in Latin verse. Not that I think, as many do, that too much time is spent at our great schools in the latter, but it appears to me that too little time is given to the former.

Considering that the Roman language is not only that of the classical writers, but, formerly, was that of law and of philosophy, it is plain that the motives are many and strong for attaining an habitual facility of understanding the tongue wherein such inestimable works have been written. Perhaps, too, the practice of writing is indispensable as the preparation for reading without difficulty.

Yet I desire that you should not misunderstand me. It is neither my intention nor my wish to undervalue poetry, nor even the custom of making verses in a living or a dead language. I do not know any means of becoming so intimately acquainted with the powers of a

language as by composing verses. The restraints of metre, and the necessity of selecting expressions that are not only clear but elegant, compel an author to vary and enrich his phraseology by every allowable idiom. No! not one even of the abstrusest sciences calls for more severe attention, nor more subtle distinctions; and surely none requires the fancy and the feeling, without which verse is of so little worth that it is not sterling, but merely a kind of plated prose. Do not think, therefore, that you are wasting your time in the exercises demanded of you at college, although you are intended for a grave and laborious profession, busied in the noisy highways of real life, and leading far away from the quiet field-paths of literature and philosophy.

To talk to you about the high rank or the principles of poetry is quite needless. No subject has been treated of by abler writers. Yet, as you wish to recall some parts of our last long conversation, I will again mention a short forgotten passage of an author, who was made ridiculous by the humorous attacks of Swift and Pope. DENNIS says, somewhere, of poetry," It should be simple, sensuous, and passionate."

Perhaps the word "sensuous" is not sufficiently authorised, but, no matter! you will not find elsewhere so brief

and so complete an enumeration of the chief qualities in the noblest art *.

There are also in Priestley's Lectures on Oratory some excellent remarks, beginning thus:-"In order thoroughly "to interest a reader, it is of singular advantage to be very circumstantial, and to introduce as many sensible images as possible."

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Your own memory cannot fail to suggest many proofs of this maxim; but I must warn you not to fall into the

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* Note, 1834. In Gray's Common-place-book is the following striking passage:-" In former times, they loved, I will not say tediousness, but length, and a train of circumstances in a narration. "The vulgar do so still it gives an air of reality to the facts, it "fixes the attention, raises and keeps in suspense their expectation, " and supplies the place of their little and lifeless imagination; and "it keeps pace with the slow motion of their own thoughts. Tell "them a story as you would to a man of wit; it will appear to them as an object seen in the night by a flash of lightning: but when you "have placed it in various lights, and various positions, they will come at last to see and feel it as well as others. But we need not "confine ourselves to the vulgar, and to understandings beneath our 66 own. Circumstance ever was and ever will be the essence both of

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poetry and oratory. It has in some sort the same effect upon every "mind that it has upon that of the populace; and I fear the quickness " and delicate impatience of these polished times are but the forerun"ners of the decline of all those beautiful arts which depend upon the imagination * * *** Homer, the father of Circumstance, has "occasion for the same apology."

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