spirit than the still vigour of reserved _Madeira_.

But the easiest, as well as the most effectual way of writing to the
bad taste of your age, is to set out while your genius is yet upon a
level with it. Accordingly, if you have a son who begins to display
a hopeful bloom of imagination, be sure to publish, with all the
advantages that can be procured, the very first essays of his genius.
They will hardly be too good to please; and besides, they have a
chance to be received with particular favour and admiration as the
productions of a young muse. When he has thus taken possession of the
public ear, he may venture, as his genius ripens, to do his best; he
may write as well as he can, perhaps without much danger of sinking in
reputation. The renown of his first crude essays will be sufficient
to prejudice the mobility, great and small, in favour of the most
exquisite pieces he can produce afterwards. But if he must live by his
wit, the best thing you can do for him is to transplant him, as
early as possible, to PARIS; where in the worst of days, in the most
_Gothic_ muse-detesting age, there is still some shelter afforded to
the most delicate as well as the most uncommon flower that blossoms
in the human mind. In that gay serene and genial climate the muses
are still more or less cultivated, though not with the same ardour and
passion in every age; as appears from the following passage translated
from a[A] _French_ author, who wrote about the beginning of the
present century. "Almost all the arts have in their turns experienced
that disgust and love of change which is natural to mankind. But I
don't know that any one of them has felt it more than Poetry; which
in some ages has been exalted to a triumphal heighth, in others
neglected, discouraged and despised. About sixty years ago, under
the administration of one of the greatest geniuses that ever _France_
produced, poetry found itself amongst us at its highest pitch of