Shurton Bars has less merit than most things in your volume; personally,
it may chime in best with your own feelings, and therefore you love it
best. It has however great merit. In your 4th Epistle that is an
exquisite paragraph and fancy-full of "A stream there is which rolls in
lazy flow" &c. &c. "Murmurs sweet undersong 'mid jasmine bowers" is a
sweet line and so are the 3 next. The concluding simile is far-fetch'd.
"Tempest-honord" is a quaint-ish phrase. Of the Monody on H., I will
here only notice these lines, as superlatively excellent. That energetic
one, "Shall I not praise thee, Scholar, Christian, friend," like to that
beautiful climax of Shakspeare "King, Hamlet, Royal Dane, Father." "Yet
memory turns from little men to thee!" "and sported careless round their
fellow child." The whole, I repeat it, is immensely good. Yours is a
Poetical family. I was much surpriz'd and pleased to see the signature
of Sara to that elegant composition, the 5th Epistle. I dare not
_criticise_ the Relig Musings, I like not to _select_ any part where all
is excellent. I can only admire; and thank you for it in the name of a
Christian as well as a Lover of good Poetry. Only let me ask, is not
that thought and those words in Young, "Stands in the Sun"? or is it
only such as Young in one of his _better moments_ might have writ?
"Believe, thou, O my Soul, Life is a vision, shadowy of truth, And vice
and anguish and the wormy grave, Shapes of a dream!" I thank you for
these lines, in the name of a Necessarian, and for what follows in next
paragraph in the name of a child of fancy. After all you can[not] nor
ever will write any thing, with which I shall be so delighted as what I
have heard yourself repeat. You came to Town, and I saw you at a time
when your heart was yet bleeding with recent wounds. Like yourself, I
was sore galled with disappointed Hope. You had "many an holy lay, that
mourning, soothed the mourner on his way." I had ears of sympathy to
drink them in, and they yet vibrate pleasant on the sense. When I read
in your little volume, your 19th Effusion, or the 28th or 29th, or what