justice. The Critical have, in their wisdom, selected not the very best
specimens, & notice not, except as one name on the muster-roll, the
"Religious Musings." I suspect Master Dyer to have been the writer of
that article, as the substance of it was the very remarks & the very
language he used to me one day. I fear you will not accord entirely with
my sentiments of Cowper, as _exprest_ above, (perhaps scarcely just),
but the poor Gentleman has just recovered from his Lunacies, & that
begets pity, & pity love, and love admiration, & then it goes hard with
People but they lie! Have you read the Ballad called "Leonora," in the
second Number of the "Monthly Magazine"? If you have !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There is another fine song, from the same author (Berger), in the 3d
No., of scarce inferior merit; & (vastly below these) there are some
happy specimens of English hexameters, in an imitation of Ossian, in the
5th No. For your Dactyls I am sorry you are so sore about 'em--a very
Sir Fretful! In good troth, the Dactyls are good Dactyls, but their
measure is naught. Be not yourself "half anger, half agony" if I
pronounce your darling lines not to be the best you ever wrote--you have
written much.

For the alterations in those lines, let 'em run thus:

I may not come a pilgrim, to the Banks
of _Avon, lucid stream_, to taste the wave (inspiring wave) was too
which Shakspere drank, our British Helicon; common place.
or with mine eye, &c., &c.
_To muse, in tears_, on that mysterious Youth, &c. (better than "drop
a tear")

Then the last paragraph alter thus