counties. To the free-school the boys of
the city had a right to come, but every
body knows how superficial, in general,
is unpaid instruction. However, my
grandfather, aware of Johnson's genius,
took the highest pains with him, though
his parents were poor, and mean in their
situation, keeping market stalls, as bat-
tle-dore booksellers. Johnson has not
had the gratitude once to mention his
generous master, in any of his writings;
but all this is foreign to your inquiries,
who Miss Molly Aston was, and at what
period is Bame for her commenced? It
was during those school-days, when the
reputation of Johnson's talents, and ra
pid progress in the classics, induced the
noble-minded Walmsley to endure, at
his elegant table, the low-born squalid
youth-here that he suffered him and
imp their eagle wings," a
Garrick to
delighted spectator and auditor of their
efforts. It was here that Miss Molly
Aston was frequently a visitor in the fa-
mily of her brother-in-law, and probably
amused herself with the uncouth adora-
tions of the learned, though dirty strip
ling, whose mean appearance was over
looked, because of the genius and know
ledge that blazed through him; though
with "umbered flames," from constitu-
tional melancholy and spleen. Lucy
Porter, whose visit to Lichfield had been
but for a few weeks, was then gone back
to her parents at Birmingham, and the
brighter Molly Aston became the Laura
of our Petrarch. Fired, however, at
length, with ideal love, and incapable of
inspiring mutual inclinations in the young
and lively, he married, at twenty-three,
the mother of his Lucy, and went to seek
his fortune in London. She had borne
an indifferent character, during the life
of her first husband. He died insolvent,
leaving his three grown-up children, de-
pendent on the bounty of his rich bache-
for brother in London, who left them
largely, but would never do any thing for
the worthless widow, who had married
"the literary cub," as he used to call
him. She lived thirty years with John-
son; if shuddering, half-famished, in an
author's garret, could be called living,

During her life, the fair and learned
devotee, Miss H. Boothby, in the wane
of her youth, a woman of family and gen-
teel fortune, encouraged him to resume
his Platonisms. After the death of this
wife, and this spiritualized mistress, Mrs.
Thrale took him up. He loved her for
her wit, her beauty, her luxurious table,
her coach, and her library; and she loved

him for the literary consequence his resi
dence at Streatham threw around her.
The rich, the proud, and titled literati,
would not have sought Johnson in his
dirty garret, nor the wealthy brewer's
then uncelebrated wife, without the
actual presence, in her salon d'Apollon,
of a votary known to be of the number
of the inspired.

POLITICAL OPINIONS AND WRITERS,

You inquire after my opinions on the momentous event, which draws to itself the anxious eyes of all Europe. Mine did not coldly behold a great nation emancipating itself from a tyrannous government-but I soon began to apprehend that its deliverers were pushing the levelling principle into extremes more fatal to civilized liberty than even an arbitrary monarchy, with all its train of evils. I read H. Williams's interesting letters from France. They do not at tempt to reason, they only paint, and shew the ill mined side of the prospect, My own enthusiasin, which apprehension had damped, rekindled beneath the glow of her feelings and imagination-but not into a firm dependence that France possessed a band of leaders, sufficiently exempted from selfish ambition, to promote the success and felicity of a new and hazardous experiment; in which all the links were broken in that great chain of subordination which binds to each other the various orders of existence.

Mr. Burke's book then came before me-and though I read, with contempt, his nonsensical quixotism about the Queen of France-though I saw, with indignation, the apostate whig labouring to overturn the principles which produced the revolution, and to prove a king of England's right to reign in despite of the wills of his subjects, yet I saw also a system of order and polity, elucidated and rendered interesting by every appeal to the affections of the human bosom; and it appeared to ne more consonant to human nature, as it is, and less injurious to the public safety, than the levelling extreme into which France has rushed. Depending that the persuasive orator would not dare to misrepresent facts, I thought there was every thing to fear for France, and much to detest in ercive circulation of the assignats, and in the wantonly tyrannous restraints she laid upon her monarch.

her co

Sir Brooke Boothby's ingenious and eloquent reply to Burke, was the first answer I perused. It was with pleasure that I saw him clearly refuting his oppo

neut's

nent's asserted legality of our king's claim to the crown, independent of the suffrages of his people; but it left my apprehensions of Gallic danger in full force. Not denying the truth of the circumstances by which Burke seems to prove that danger, Sir Brooke appears to admit, its existence.

As to the anti-sophist, Priestley, I dis like his disingenuous manoeuvrings about Christianity too much to respect his opinions on any subject, so I did not read his reply to Burke.

But I read Payne's last work, and saw him divest the oratoric renegade of all pretensions to candour and fair statement, by proving that he had misrepresented some facts, and kept back others with all the finesse of a courtly politician. I read in Payne that declaration of the rights of man, upon which a perfect code of laws, and a perfect form of government might be established, if human nature was disinterested, wise, and virtuous. Not being any of these things, but the reverse of them all, I do not be lieve those who have obtained power in France will respect its maxims enough to govern themselves by them; enough to prevent the people from repenting that they fled from the throne to petty tyrants, This author's style is not elegant, or at all possesses equal force with his matter yet, at intervals, he shows that he can command a fine one.

The Lessons to a Young Prince are amongst the finest and most spirited compositions of the age. Their style is perfect. It has all the beauty and animation of Burke's, with more perspicuity. Their author is a miracle, a political writer without party-prejudice. My opinions almost always met his as I read; particularly when he traces to its source the king's popularity, viz. the dread of seeing a needy, rapacious, and unprincipled faction govern the nation, with a more oppressive hand than our present rulers. One of them has pulled off his masque of patriotism to get into power by the king's favour; and the rest would follow his example, could they first get power.

I admire the French for taking the privilege of making war with other nations out of the hands of kings and ininisters. I wish it was so here-but surely they have violated justice most tyrannically by their invasion of property, and the confiscation of hereditary estates. As to the church-lands, their being reduced into moderation, is well-I wish that

also was so here. Yet, upon the whole,
I am inclined to fear, that more diffusive
misery and national inconsequence will
be the result of that extreme to which
they are pushing the levelling principle,
than from the system, bad as it was,
which they have destroyed. After all,
I think modestly, and with no pretence
to decision. Though the French revo
lution is at present too big with danger
to admit a desire, in any real well-wisher
to this country, that she should consider
it as her model;-yet I wish the French
may prove a pattern, hereafter, of public
virtue and public happiness, to the whole
world. Politics never engrossed much of
my attention, convinced
"In every government, though terrors reign,
Though tyrant kings, or tyrant laws restrain,
How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws, or kings, can cause d

cure."*

BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON.

As yet, I have read only the first volume of Boswell's Life of Johnson. What I foresaw has happened. That ingenious pencil, which so well fulfilled the biographic duty, and painted the despot exactly as he was, when roaming the lonely Hebrides, has, at the impulse of terror, been exchanged for a more glowing one; and, in this work, almost every thing is kept back which could give um brage to Johnson's idolaters, by justly displaying the darker, as well as fairer, sides of the medal. All, however, but his idolaters, must detest the ungrateful duplicity proved upon him, when we find him speaking with slight, bordering upon contempt, of the then Mrs. Thrale, in the zenith of his intimacy with her, Mr. Boswell was not aware, that impar tiality would compare what he said of her, with what he said to her. hear you," says he, in his letters to that lady, is to hear wisdom; to see you is to see virtue." What despicable flattery was that, if he really be lieved the stores of her mind were trivial, and that she had no truth? while, if conscious that these imputations were upjust, his heart was at once thankless and malevolently false. Such, I confess, amidst all his gloomy piety, I always thought it. That conviction has not receded beneath the contempt of your charming friend, and of Mrs. Montague,

"To

Miss Seward, misled by the massacres and horrors of the revolution, afterwards became an alarmist, and circulated among her friends the vilest libels against the supporters of public liberty in England!

which

which his biographer has so indiscreetly,
so impolitely, recorded; nor beneath the
lying assertion, that Gray was a dull fel
low, and that there are but eight good
fines in all his poetry. I hear Mason
fares no better in the second volume.
Dark and envious calumniator!

I both blame Mr. Boswell, and won
der at him for the wanton, because un
necessary, inroads which a number of
those records must make upon the feel-
ings of many. But for them, his work
had been of great value indeed. Enter
taining, in the first degree, it certainly
is; and, with the most commendable
precision, exhibits the events of his life
through all their series and changes. It
contains a prodigious mass of colloquial
wit and humour, which were certainly
unrivalled. Let it, however, be remem
bered, that, to produce their eclipsing
and resistless power, many things com-
bined, which a wise and generous mind
would not, for its own peace and health,
consent to feel, even to possess that un-
equalled talent; viz. spleen, envy, bound-
less haughtiness, and utter callousness to
all the mental sensibilities of others. I
am of St. Paul's mind, who says, where
these things are, nor alms nor prayers
constitute goodness.

"Say thou, whose thoughts at humble fame
repine,

Shall Johnson's wit with Johnson's spleen be

thine

MRS. KNOWLES.

where they may be quiet, or to France, where their energies may have ample scope; but let them not attempt to muddy the at present silver currents of our pros perity.

I do not yet wish that the blood-thirsty invaders of unhappy France may succeed nor do I at all apprehend that they can be victorious. At the king's deposition I felt very indignant; but if, as it now seeins to appear, he was secretly plotting with the invaders, he deserves his fate, and justifies those who have abjured him. " Surely we shall have the wisdom to per sist in our neutrality. Ill as the French have, in many respects, acted, distracted as are their councils, and impotent as at present seem their laws, there is danger that the worst consequences would ensue. to us should we arm against them; that the contagion of ideal liberty might in fect our troops, as it has infected those of the Austrians and Prussians. Paine's pernicious and impossible system of equal rights, is calculated to captivate and dazzle the vulgar; to make them spurn the restraints of legislation, and to spread anarchy, murder, and ruin, over the earth.

MRS. DELANY AND DR. PARR.

In this interesting scene of friendship, literature, and the arts, I have been m Dr. Parr, and to the celebrated hortus troduced to that intellectual laminary, siccus of Mrs. Delany, contained in tea immense folios, each enriched with an hundred floral plants, representing, in cut paper, of infinitely various dyes, the finest flowers of our own and every other, climate, from the best specimens that the field, the garden, the greenhouse, and the conservatory, could furnish; and with a fidelity and vividness of colouring, which shames the needle and the pencil. The moss, the films, the farina, every, the minutest, part, is represented with matchless delicacy. It was at the age of seventy-five that this prodigy of female genius invented her art, and gave it that last perfection which makes imitation hopeless. Always a fine painter, and not ignorant of the arts of chemistry, she her self dyed her papers from whence the new creation arose. Of this astonishing work Dr. Darwin has given a most erro neous description in his splendid poem. He ought not to have taken such a liberty. It represents Mrs. Delany as a mere ar. tificial flower-maker, using wires and wax,

Mrs. Knowles, the witty and the elo-
quent, was amongst us, on a week's visit,
since you left Lchfield. She made
flaming eulogiams upon French anarchy,
which she calls freedom, and uttered no
less vehement philippies against every
thing which pertains to monarchy. For
myself, I have ever loved and venerated
the cause of liberty; and wished every
restraint upon power which can be con-
sistent with that order, and those links
of subordination which bind, in one
agreeing whole, the necessarily various
degrees and employments of civilized
lile; but I every day grow more and
more sick of that mischievous oratory
which ferments and diffuses the spirit of
sedition. In the name of peace and
comfort, let those who are dissatisfied
with a government, in which their lives
and properties are secure, which is great
and revered in the eyes of every neigh
bouring nation; against which no sword
is drawn, and to whose commerce every
port is open; let them to Ainerica, Stratford-upon-Avon,
MONTHLY MAG. No. 215.

The seat of Court Dewes, esq. near

40

and

a

tial towards acquiring facility in compos sition, viz. the writing alternately in different measures, and in great variety of Self-set tasks of this sort' are

measure.

The ear will better bear the long continet, or one of the various forms of the

very useful. - Choose either the eight or ten feet couplet, or the elegiac, the son lyric, for the vehicle of ideas, winch, on arising in the mind, seem capable of appearing to advantage in the poetic dress. Lay a fine poem iu the chosen measure on your table; read it over aloud; endeavour to catch its spirit; observe its pauses and general construction. Thus, a young poet should compose as a stadent in painting paints, from the best. models, not with servile minuteness, but with generous emulation and critical at