but I will not fatigue you any more now, nor, I hope, at any future time. I trust, my dear friend, to see you in good health, cheerful and happy, relying entirely on that great and good Being, whose ways are not ours, neither can we comprehend them; and our very ignorance should teach us perfect reliance on his wisdom and goodness. I had a troubled night, and am thinking of the time when you will kindly send, and sometimes call, to hear, how Mr. Crabbe does to-day, and how he rested;' for though we must all take the way of our friend departed, yet mine is the natural first turn; and you will not wonder that restless nights put me in mind of this."

6

A friend having for the first time seen the "Rejected Addresses," had written with some soreness of the parody on my father's poetry; he thus an

swers:

"You were more feeling than I was, when you read the excellent parodies of the young men who wrote the 'Rejected Addresses.' There is a little ill-natureand, I take the liberty of adding, undeserved ill-nature

in their prefatory address; but in their versification, they have done me admirably. They are extraordinary men; but it is easier to imitate style, than to furnish matter."*

*In the new edition of the "Rejected Addresses," I find a note, part of which is as follows:--" The writer's first interview with the poet Crabbe, who may be designated Pope in worsted stockings, took place at William Spencer's villa at Petersham, close to what that gentleman called his gold-fish pond, though it was scarcely three feet in diameter, throwing up a jet d'eau like a thread. The venerable bard, seizing both the hands of his satirist, exclaimed, with a good-humoured laugh, Ah! my old enemy, how do you do?' In the course of conversation, he expressed great astonishment at his popularity in London; adding, ' In my own village they think nothing of me.' The subject happening

In June 1825, he thus writes from Mr. Hoare' villa at Hampstead :

"Hampstead, June, 1825.

My time passes I cannot tell how pleasantly, when the pain leaves me. To-day I read one of my long stories to my friends, and Mrs. Joanna Baillie and her sister. It was a task; but they encouraged me, and were, or seemed, gratified. I rhyme at Hampstead with a great deal of facility, for nothing interrupts me but kind calls to something pleasant; and though all this makes parting painful, it will, I hope, make me resolute to enter upon my duties diligently when I return. I am too much indulged. Except a return of pain, and that not severe, I have good health; and if my walks are not so long, they are more frequent. I have seen many things and many people; have seen Mr. Southey and Mr. Wordsworth; have been some days with Mr. Rogers, and at last have been at the Athenæum, and purpose to visit the Royal Institution; and have been to Richmond in a steam-boat; seen, also, the picture galleries, and some other exhibitions: but I passed one Sunday in London with discontent, doing no duty myself, nor listening to another; and I hope my uneasiness proceeded not merely

to be the inroads of time upon beauty, the writer quoted the following lines:

'Six years had pass'd, and forty ere the six,
When Time began to play his usual tricks :

My locks, once comely in a virgin's sight,

Locks of pure brown, now felt th' encroaching white;
Gradual each day I liked my horses less,

My dinner more I learnt to play at chess.'

That's very good!' cried the bard; whose is it?' Your own.'-Indeed! hah! well, I had quite forgotten it." The writer proceeds to insinuate, that this was a piece of affectation on the part of my father. If Mr. Smith had written as many verses, and lived as long, as Mr. Crabbe, he would, I fancy, have been incapable of expressing such a suspicion.

from breaking a habit. pleasant, if the hours before it had been rightly spent: but I would not willingly pass another Sunday in the same manner. I have my home with my friends here (Mrs. Hoare's), and exchange it with reluctance for the Hummums occasionally. Such is the state of the garden here, in which I walk and read, that, in a morning like this, the smell of the flowers is fragrant beyond any thing I ever perceived before. It is what I can suppose may be in Persia, or other oriental countries. -a Paradisiacal sweetness.

We had a dinner social and

"I am told that I or my verses, or perhaps both, have abuse in a book of Mr. Colburn's publishing, called The Spirit of the Times.' I believe I felt something indignant: but my engraved seal dropped out of the socket and was lost, and I perceived this vexed me much more than the 'spirit' of Mr. Hazlitt."

"Trowbridge, Feb. 3. 1826.

"Your letter, my dear Mrs. Leadbeater, was dated the 9th of the tenth month of last year; just at a time when I was confined in the house of friends, most attentive to me during the progress and termination of a painful disease to which I had been long subject, though I was not at any time before so suddenly and so alarmingly attacked. I had parted from my son, his wife and child, about ten days before, and judged myself to be in possession of health, strength, and good spirits fitted for my journey· one about 200 miles from this place, and in which I had pleased myself with the anticipation of meeting with relatives dear to me, and many of the friends of my earlier days. I reached London with no other symptom of illness than fatigue; but was indisposed on the second night, and glad to proceed to Hampstead on the third day, where I found my accustomed welcome in the house of two ladies, who have been long endeared to me by acts of

unceasing kindness, which I can much better feel than describe. On the second evening after my arrival, Miss Hoare and I went to the place of worship to which she is accustomed; where, just as the service of the day terminated, a sudden and overpowering attack of the disease to which I allude was the commencement of an illness which was troublesome to my friends about three weeks, but, as the pain gradually passed away, was scarcely to be esteemed as a trial to me, or to the resignation and patience which pain should give birth to. I am now— let me be thankful-in a great measure freed from pain, and have, probably, that degree of health, and even exertion, which, at my age, is a blessing rather to be desired than expected; the allotted threescore and ten has passed over me, and I am now in my seventysecond year! thankful, I hope, for much that I have, and, among other things, for the friendship of some very estimable beings. I feel the heaviness and languor of time, and that even in our social visits at this season. I cannot enjoy festivity; with friends long known I can be easy, and even cheerful, but the pain of exertion, which I think it a duty to make, has its influence over me, and I wonder― be assured that I am perfectly sincere in this I wonder when young people—and there are such-seem to desire that I should associate with them."

"Pucklechurch, 1826.

"Caroline, now six years old, reads incessantly and insatiably. She has been travelling with John Bunyan's 'Pilgrim,' and enjoyed a pleasure never, perhaps, to be repeated. The veil of religious mystery, that so beautifully covers the outward and visible adventures, is quite enchanting. The dear child was caught reading by her sleeping maid, at five o'clock this morning, impatient-'t is our nature—to end her pleasure." "Trowbridge, 1827.

"I often find such difficulties in visiting the sick, that

I am at a loss what thoughts to suggest to them, or to entertain of them. Home is not better (to the aged), but it is better loved and more desired; for in other places we cannot indulge our humours and tastes so well, nor so well comply with those of other people.

"In the last week was our fair; and I am glad that quiet is restored. When I saw four or five human beings, with painted faces and crazy dresses and gestures, trying to engage and entice the idle spectators to enter their showhouse, I felt the degradation; for it seemed like man reduced from his natural rank in the creation :

and yet, probably, they would say,- What can we do? We were brought up to it, and we must eat.'

"I think the state of an old but hale man is the most comfortable and least painful of any stage in life; but it is always liable to infirmities: and this is as it should be. It would not be well to be in love with life when so little of it remains."

The two following extracts are from notes written to the same kind friend, on his birthday of 1827, and on that of 1828:

"Parsonage, Dec. 24. 1827.-There can be only one reason for declining your obliging invitation; and that is, the grievous stupidity that grows upon me daily. I have read of a country where they reckon all men after a certain period of life to be no longer fitted for companionship in business or pleasure, and so they put the poor useless beings out of their way. I think I am beyond that time; but as we have no such prudent custom, I will not refuse myself the good you so kindly offer, and you will make due allowance for the stupidity aforesaid."

Parsonage, Dec. 24. 1828.-This has been a very busy day with me. My kind neighbours have found out that the 24th of this month is my birthday, and I have not only had music in the evening, but small re