to "gaze upon the waves below." What follows now may come
next as detached verses, suggested by the "Monody," rather than a part
of it. They are, indeed, in themselves, very sweet;

"And we, at sober eve, would round thee throng,
Hanging enraptured on thy stately song!"

in particular, perhaps. If I am obscure, you may understand me by
counting lines. I have proposed omitting twenty-four lines; I feel that
thus compressed it would gain energy, but think it most likely you will
not agree with me; for who shall go about to bring opinions to the bed
of Procrustes, and introduce among the sons of men a monotony of
identical feelings? I only propose with diffidence.

Reject you, if you please, with as little remorse as you would the color
of a coat or the pattern of a buckle, where our fancies differed.

The "Pixies" is a perfect thing, and so are the "Lines on the Spring."
page 28. The "Epitaph on an Infant," like a Jack-o'-lantern, has danced
about (or like Dr. Forster's [4] scholars) out of the "Morning Chronicle"
into the "Watchman," and thence back into your collection. It is very
pretty, and you seem to think so, but, may be, overlooked its chief
merit, that of filling up a whole page, I had once deemed sonnets of
unrivalled use that way, but your Epitaphs, I find, are the more
diffuse. "Edmund" still holds its place among your best verses, "Ah!
fair delights" to "roses round," in your poem called "Absence," recall
(none more forcibly) to my mind the tones in which you recited it, I
will not notice, in this tedious (to you) manner, verses which have been
so long delighful to me, and which you already know my opinion of. Of
this kind are Bowles, Priestley, and that most exquisite and most
Bowles-like of all, the nineteenth effusion. It would have better ended
with "agony of care;" the last two lines are obvious and unnecessary;
and you need not now make fourteen lines of it, now it is rechristened
from a Sonnet to an Effusion.

Schiller might have written the twentieth effusion; 't is worthy of him
in any sense, I was glad to meet with those lines you sent me when my
sister was so ill; I had lost the copy, and I felt not a little proud at
seeing my name in your verse. The "Complaint of Ninathoma" (first stanza
in particular) is the best, or only good, imitation of Ossian I ever
saw, your "Restless Gale" excepted. "To an Infant" is most sweet; is not
"foodful," though, very harsh? Would not "dulcet" fruit be less