would see it (I hope), hear of it often; and it should be taught to love you, if it had not learnt that lesson before. Our child must love our brother and sister. Its relation to you is likewise a presumption that we shall not be wanting in that love for it which will be necessary to make it happy. I believe both Mr. Barbauld and myself are much disposed to love children, and that we could soon grow fond of any one who was amiable and entirely under our care. How then can we fail to love a child for whom at setting out we shall have such a stock of affection as we must have for yours? I hope, too, we should have too right a sense of things to spoil it; and we see too much of children to indulge an over-anxious care. But you know us well enough to be able to judge in general how we should educate it, and whether to your satisfaction. Conscience and affection, I hope, would unite in inciting us to fulfill an engagement we should thus voluntarily take upon ourselves, to the best of our abilities.

Our situation is not a certain one, nor have we long tried it; but we have all the reason in the world to hope that if things go on as they have hitherto done, we should be able to provide for a child in a decent and comfortable manner.

Now, my dear brother and sister, if you consent, give us which of your boys you please: if you had girls, perhaps we should ask a girl rather;

and if we might choose amongst your boys, we could make perhaps a choice ;-but that we do not expect you will let us. Give us, then, which you will; only let him be healthy, inoculated, and as young as you can possibly venture him to undertake the journey. This last circumstance is indispensable for if he were not quite young, we should not gain over him the influence, we could not feel for him the affection, which would be necessary: besides, if at all able to play with our pupils, he would immediately mix with them, and would be little more to us than one of the schoolboys. Do not, therefore, put us off by saying that one of yours when he is old enough shall pay us a visit. To see any of yours at any time would no doubt give us the highest pleasure; but that does not by any means come up to what we now ask. We now leave the matter before you ;-consider maturely, and give us your answer.

O no! I never promised to fill this second sheet. Good bye to you.

1776.

YOUR kind and acceptable letter would have met with an earlier answer, if we could either of us have commanded time to write. The manner in which you receive our proposal gives us great pleasure. My dear tender Patty! I wonder not that your softness takes alarm at the idea of part

ing with any of your sweet blossoms. All I can say is, that the greater the sacrifice, the more we shall think ourselves obliged to you, and the stronger ties we shall think ourselves under to supply, as far as possible, to the child of our adoption the tenderness and care of the parents we take it from. Though we should be content with either, yet of the two we shall like better Charles, if you determine to give him us, than the unborn ;perhaps, however, by this time I am wrong in calling him so but if he was fixed upon, it would be longer before the scheme could take effect, and more uncertain whether he would live and thrive. This, however, is a point you must determine for ús: we shall acquiesce in either.

You are very favourable to my fragments;fragments, however, they are like to continue unless I had a little more time. I want much to see your Essays,-how do you proceed with them? To attack Shakespear! heresy indeed! I will desire Mr. Montague to chastise you, except by way of penance you finish the ode you once began in his praise. I am of your opinion, however, that we idolize Shakespear rather too much for a Christian country. That inconsistencies may be found in his characters is certain: yet, notwithstanding that, character is his distinguishing excellence; and though he had not the learning of the schools in his head, he had the theatre of

the world before him, and could make reflections on what he saw. An equal vein of poetry runs through the works of some of his cotemporaries : but his writings are most peculiarly marked by good sense and striking characters; so that I think you do him not justice if you call him only a poet.

Palgrave, 1777.

You have given us too much pleasure lately not to deserve an earlier acknowledgement. I hope you will believe we were not so dilatory in reading your book* as we have been in thanking you for it. It is indeed a most elegant performance; your thought is very just, and has never, I believe, been pursued before. Both the defects and beauties which you have noticed are very striking, and the result of the whole work, besides the truths it conveys, is a most pleasing impression left upon the mind from the various and picturesque images brought into view. I hope your Essay will bring down our poets from their garrets to wander about the fields and hunt squirrels. I am clearly of your opinion, that the only chance we have for novelty is by a more accurate observation of the works of Nature, though I think I

* An Essay on the Application of Natural History to Poetry.EDITOR.

should not have confined the track quite so much as you have done to the animal creation, because sooner exhausted than the vegetable; and some of the lines you have quoted from Thomson show with how much advantage the latter may be made the subject of rich description. I think too, since you put me on criticizing, it would not have been amiss if you had drawn the line between the poet and natural historian; and shown how far, and in what cases, the one may avail himself of the knowledge of the other,―at what nice period that knowledge becomes so generally spread as to authorise the poetical describer to use it without shocking the ear by the introduction of names and properties not sufficiently familiar, and when at the same time it retains novelty enough to strike. I have seen some rich descriptions of West Indian flowers and plants,-just, I dare say, but unpleasing merely because their names were uncouth, and forms not known generally enough to be put into verse. It is not, I own, much to the credit of poets, but it is true,-that we do not seem disposed to take their word for any thing, and never willingly receive information from them.

We are wondrous busy in preparing our play, The Tempest; and four or five of our little ones are to come in as fairies; and I am piecing scraps from the Midsummer Night's Dream, &c., to make a little scene instead of the mask of Ceres and