on some accounts that his name should be known, and therefore he desired me to send his piece with my petition that you should read it. As I endeavoured to smuggle a certain Essay through the world, you may perhaps suspect me of having a hand in this comedy; but I do assure you, by all that is most serious, I have not therein either art or part; I have not either invented or corrected, nor knew anything of it till it was almost finished. The author was to finish it after I came out of town, and I promised to send him a letter to you to send with it, which I did the more readily as he will remain to you mute and invisible; and therefore you will have merely the trouble of casting your eye over the play, and when you have done so, if you please to send the play with your opinion of it to my house in Hill Street I shall be more obliged to you than I can express. Any alterations you should desire will certainly be made. Upon recollection, I will beg of you not to send your letter in the packet with the play but indeed to put the letter in the post directed to me at Denton; for the person may otherwise delay my having your letter if he should not call at my house for his play. I shall be in great anxiety till I hear you forgive me the liberty I have taken. I was under very uncommon obligations to exert my endeavours to serve the author of this play; I promise you I will never again presume so far. I should be very unhappy if I thought my taking this liberty would lessen that friendship which I flatter myself Mr. and Mrs. Garrick have for one who has the highest esteem for them. I live over again in imagination the charming day I passed at Hampton. May the muses, les jeux, and les ris, as usual, keep their court there, and health and pleasure never be absent even for an hour. With most perfect regard I am Dear Sir &c

E. MONTAGU.

CLXXII.

Dr. Fordyce, the dramatic critic, in a letter to David Garrick, narrates his impressions of that great actor's impersonation of King Lear.'

Dr. Fordyce to David Garrick.

May 13, 1763.

Dr. Fordyce presents his best compliments to Mr. Garrick and begs to be indulged in the pleasure of telling that gentleman some

part of what he felt the other night at Drury Lane. It is impossible to tell him all.

He has seen Mr. Garrick in his other characters with delight always, and with admiration as often as the author will let him. But in King Lear he saw him with rapture and astonishment. He could wish, he could imagine, nothing higher. It was Nature herself wrought into a vast variety of the strongest, the tenderest, and the most terrible emotions, that ever agitated the breast of a father and of a monarch.

In my opinion, Sir, those who have not seen you in that wonderful part, are still strangers to the extent of your powers. They have not yet seen Mr. Garrick. It seems to me the character, of all others, that gives the noblest scope to the career and diversity of his genius. And I am much mistaken if, in the representation, be does not feel his soul expand with a freedom and fulness of satisfaction, beyond what he experiences in any other part. Such violent starts of amazement, of horror, of indignation, of paternal rage excited by filial ingratitude the most prodigious; such a perceptible, yet rapid gradation, from these dreadful feelings to the deepest frenzy; such a striking correspondence between the tempest in his mind and that of the surrounding elements. In the very whirlwind of passion and of madness, such an exact attention to propriety, that it is still the passion and the madness of a King. Those exquisite touches of self-reproach for a most foolish and illrequited fondness to two worthless daughters, and for the greatest injustice and cruelty to one transcendently excellent. Those resistless complaints of aged and royal wretchedness, with all the mingled workings of a warm and hasty, but well-meaning and generous soul, just recovering from the convulsion of its faculties, through the pious care of a worthy, but injured child and follower; till at length the parent, the sovereign and the friend, shine out in the mildest majesty of fervent virtue, like the sun after a fearful storm, breaking forth delightfully in all the soft splendour of a summer evening. These, Sir, are some of the great circumstances which so eminently distinguished your action two nights ago. They possessed by turns all your frame, and appeared successively in every word, and yet more in every gesture, but most of all in every look and feature; presenting, I verily think, such a picture as the world never saw anywhere else; yet such a one as all the

world must acknowledge perfectly true, interesting, and unaffected. A very crowded audience gave the plainest proofs that they found it so. Even a French lady, if I mistook not the person, who has been used to all the polite frigidity of the French drama, was moved and melted in the most sensible manner. But what struck me most and will ever strike me on reflection, was the sustaining with full power, to the last, a character marked with the most diversified and vehement sensations, without even departing once, so far as I could perceive, even in the quickest transitions and fiercest paroxysms, from the simplicity of nature, the grace of attitude or the beauty of expression. What I alone regretted was the blending of modern tragedy with the inimitable composition of your immortal Shakespeare. It was some comfort, however, that you had no share in the whining scene.

I hope, Sir, you will forgive this freedom of praise, prompted as it is by pure esteem for the man whom forming Nature, without the least assistance from example, has been placed so high in his profession. I have said so much, not because I imagine that my single approbation can be of any consequence to Mr. Garrick, amidst the approbation of the public; but merely to relieve myself in some measure from a load of sensibility with which King Lear has quite overwhelmed me.

I am Sir, your most obedient servant

J. FORDYCE.

CLXXIII.

A young artist who had described himself as engaged in dissensions with certain picture dealers at Rome who were endeavouring to influence travellers against the English copyists, received this kind and excellent letter of advice from Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Sir Joshua Reynolds to Mr. Barry.

1769.

Dear Sir, I am very much obliged to you for your remembrance of me in your letter to Mr. Burke, which, though I have read with great pleasure as a composition, I cannot help saying with some regret, to find that so great a portion of your attention has been engaged upon temporary matters, which might be so much more profitably employed upon what would stick by you through your whole life.

Whoever is resolved to excel in painting, or indeed in any other art, must bring all his mind to bear upon that one object, from the moment he rises till he goes to bed; the effect of every object that meets the painter's eye may give him a lesson, provided his mind is calm, unembarrassed with other objects, and open to instruction. This general attention, with other studies connected with the art, which must employ the artist in his closet, will be found sufficient to fill up life, if it was much longer than it is. Were I in your place, I would consider myself as playing a great game, and never suffer the little malice and envy of my rivals to draw off my attention from the main object; which, if you pursue with a steady eye, it will not be in the power of all the Cicerones in the world to hurt you. Whilst they are endeavouring to prevent the gentlemen from employing the young artists, instead of injuring them, they are, in my opinion, doing them the greatest service.

Whilst I was at Rome I was very little employed by them, and that I always considered as so much time lost. Copying those ornamental pictures, which the travelling gentlemen always bring home with them as furniture for their houses, is far from being the most profitable manner of a student spending his time.

Whoever has great views I would recommend to him, whilst at Rome, rather to live on bread and water, than lose those advantages which he can never hope to enjoy a second time, and which he will find only in the Vatican; where, I will engage, no cavalier sends his students to copy for him. I do not mean this as any reproach to the gentlemen; the works in that place, though they are the proper study of an artist, make but an awkward figure painted in oil, and reduced to the size of easel pictures. The Capella Sistina is the production of the greatest genius that was ever employed in the arts; it is worth considering by what principles that stupendous greatness of style is produced; and endeavouring to produce something of your own on those principles, will be a more advantageous method of study, than copying the St. Cecilia in the Borghese, or the Herodias of Guido, which may be copied to eternity, without contributing one jot towards making a man a more able painter.

If you neglect visiting the Vatican often, and particularly the Capella Sistina, you will neglect receiving that peculiar advantage

which Rome can give above all other cities in the world. In other places you will find casts from the antique, and capital pictures of the great painters, but it is there only that you can form an idea of the dignity of the art, as it is there only that you can see the works of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle. If you should not relish them at first, which may probably be the case, as they have none of those qualities which are captivating at first sight, never cease looking till you feel something like inspiration come over you, till you think every other painter insipid, in comparison, and to be admired only for petty excellencies.

I suppose you have heard of the establishment of a Royal Academy here; the first opportunity I have I will send you the discourse I delivered at its opening, which was the first of January. As I hope you will be hereafter one of our body, I wish you would, as opportunity offers, make memorandums of the regulations of the academies that you may visit in your travels, to be engrafted on our own, if they should be found useful. I am, with the greatest Yours

esteem

J. REYNOLDS.

CLXXIV.

William Pitt did not over-estimate the military qualities of the young Brigadier-General Wolfe when he selected him much out of the order of seniority to command an expedition having for its object to deprive France of her American settlements. Although untried in any considerable command Wolfe had the character of being a perfect soldier. He was a rigid disciplinarian, and was keenly devoted to military work at a time when sloth and debauchery were distinguishing features of the British officer's life; for there was little doing between the peace of Aix-laChapelle and the outbreak of the Seven Years' War.

When the first of the two following letters to his mother was written, he was Acting-Commander of the 20th Foot in Scotland, a trying position for a young man în his twenty-third year; the second letter was written after the suppression of the Gloucestershire riots, and at a time when he little expected to be so soon called to that glorious mission which cost him his life.

Major James Wolfe to Mrs. Wolfe.

Glasgow: October 2, 1749.

Dear Madam,—It will not be possible in my circumstances to get leave of absence for four months; we can expect no such indulA less time is not worth asking for, and therefore I'll pass

gence.