old Londoner, but while I am among your choice collections, I seem to be
native to them, and free of the country. The quantity of your
observation has astonished me. What have most pleased me have been
Recollections after a Ramble, and those Grongar Hill kind of pieces in
eight syllable lines, my favourite measure, such as Cowper Hill and
Solitude. In some of your story-telling Ballads the provincial phrases
sometimes startle me. I think you are too profuse with them. In poetry
_slang_ of every kind is to be avoided. There is a rustick Cockneyism,
as little pleasing as ours of London. Transplant Arcadia to Helpstone.
The true rustic style, the Arcadian English, I think is to be found in
Shenstone. Would his Schoolmistress, the prettiest of poems, have been
better, if he had used quite the Goody's own language? Now and then a
home rusticism is fresh and startling, but where nothing is gained in
expression, it is out of tenor. It may make folks smile and stare, but
the ungenial coalition of barbarous with refined phrases will prevent
you in the end from being so generally tasted, as you deserve to be.
Excuse my freedom, and take the same liberty with my _puns_.

I send you two little volumes of my spare hours. They are of all sorts,
there is a methodist hymn for Sundays, and a farce for Saturday night.
Pray give them a place on your shelf. Pray accept a little volume, of
which I have [a] duplicate, that I may return in equal number to your
welcome presents.

I think I am indebted to you for a sonnet in the London for August.

Since I saw you I have been in France, and have eaten frogs. The nicest
little rabbity things you ever tasted. Do look about for them. Make Mrs.
Clare pick off the hind quarters, boil them plain, with parsley and
butter. The fore quarters are not so good. She may let them hop off by