idea of lofing you. Yes, they don't drop only; they pour; I fob, like a child. Is this Othello, is this Zanga? We know not what we are, nor what we may become.

This I know, that I am and ever will be, your's and only your's.

Ifend you Offian. You will fee what a favourite he is with me, by fome drawings, and pieces of (what your partiality will call) poetry, which accompany the bard of other times. Should you quit this world before me, which fate forbid, often fhall I hear your spirit (if I can be weak enough to furvive you) calling me from the low-failing cloud of night.—They abuse Macpherson for calling them tranflations. If he alone be the author of them, why does he not fay fo, and claim the prize of fame; I proteft I would. They who do not refuse their admiration to the compofitions, ftill think themselves justified to abuse Macpherson, for pretending not to be the author of what they ftill admire. Is not this ftrange?

As we could not meet this morning (how long muft our meetings depend on others, and not on ourfelves?). I was determined, you fee, to have a long converfation with you.

Pray feal, in future, with better wax, and more care. Something colder than one of my kiffes

might have thawed the feal of yesterday. But I will not talk of thawing. Had the froft and fnow continued, I had ftill been with you at H.

The remainder of this (my fecond sheet of paper, obferve) fhall be filled with what I think a valuable curiofity. The officer, whom you faw with me on Sunday, is lately come from America. He gave it me, and affures me it is original. It will explain itself. Would I might be in your dear, little, enchanted dressing-room, while you read it!

The Speech of a Shawanife Chief, to Lord Dunmore.

"I appeal to any white man to-day, if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him not meat; if he ever came cold or naked, and I gave him not clothing. During the laft long and bloody war, Logan remained idle, ignominious, in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love of the Whites, that thofe of mine own country pointed at me as they paffed by, and faid, "Logan is the friend of white men." I had even thought to live with you. But the injuries of one among you, did away that thought, and dragged me from my cabin of peace. Colonel Creffop, the last spring, in cold blood, cut off all the relations of Logan, fparing neither women nor children. There runs not a drop of the blood

of

of Logan in the veins of any human creature. This called on me for revenge. I have fought it. I have killed many. Revenge has been fully glutted.

"For my country-I rejoice at the beams of peace. But, harbour not the thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn his heel to fave his life.

"Who is there to mourn for Logan ?—Not

one."

LETTER XIV.

To the Same.

Huntingdon, 22 Feb. 1776.

How filly we were, both of us, not to recollect your favourite Jenny? and did not Jamie think of her either?

-" Though my mother did na speak,

She look'd in my face, till my heart was fit to break.”

Was not this exactly the inftance we wanted? Something more has occurred to me on the fame fubject. Rather than not write to you, or than write to you as defcriptively as recollection fometimes tempts me, I know you would have

me write nonsense.

D 3

In

In Hervey's "Meditations" are two paffages as fine as they are fimple and natural.

"A beam or two finds its way through the

grates, and reflects a feeble glimmer from the "nails of the coffins."" Should the haggard "fkeleton lift a clattering hand-." In the latter, I know not whether the epithet haggard might not be fpared.

Governor Holwell, in the account of the fufferings at the black hole at Calcutta, when he fpeaks of the length of time he supported nature by catching the drops, occafioned by the heat, which fell from his head and face, adds these words "You cannot imagine how unhappy I was when any one of them efcaped my tongue!" What a fcene! The happiness, the existence of a fellow creature, dependent upon being able to catch a drop of his own fweat! Shakespeare's fancy could not have invented, nor ever did invent, any thing more fublime; for this is nature, and nature itself is fublimity.-People write upon a particular fituation, they do not put themselves in the fituation. We only fee the writer, fitting in his study, and working up a ftory to amufe or to frighten; not the identical Tom Jones, not Macbeth himself.

Can you become the very being you describe?

Can

Can you look round, and mark only that which ftrikes in your new character, and forget all which ftruck in your own ? Can you bid your comfortable study, be the prison of innocence or the house of mourning? Can you transform your garret of indigence into the palace of pleasure? If you cannot, you had better clean fhoes, than endeavour bywritings to intereft the imagination. We cannot even bear to fee an author only peeping over the top of every page, to observe how we like him. The player I would call a corporal actor, the writer a mental actor. Garrick would in vain have put his face and his body in all the fituations of Lear, if Shakespeare had not before put his mind in them all. In a thoufand inftances, we have nothing to do but to copy nature, if we can only get her to fit our pencil. And yet--how few of the most eminent mafters are happy enough to hit off her difficult face exactly!

Every person of tafte would have been certain that Mr. Holwell was one of the sufferers in the black hole, only from the fhort paffage I have noticed.

Robinson Crufoe now-what nature! It affects us throughout, exactly in the way you mentioned.

But, fhall I finish my differtation? Come-as writing