I believe you do.  You are so obliging as to offer to accept a song of mine, if I have one by me.  Dear Sir, I have no more talent for writing a song than for writing an ode like Dryden’s or Gray’s.  It is a talent per se; and given, like every other branch of genius, by nature alone.  Poor Shenstone was labouring through his whole life to write a perfect song, and, in my opinion at least, never once succeeded; not better than Pope did in a St. Cecilian ode.  I doubt whether we have not gone a long, long way beyond the possibility of writing a good song.  All the words in the language have been so often employed on simple images (without which such a song cannot be good), and such reams of bad verses have been produced in that kind, that I question whether true simplicity itself could please now.  At least we are not likely to have any such thing.  Our present choir of poetic virgins write in the other extreme.  They colour their compositions so highly with choice and dainty phrases, that their own dresses are not more fantastic and romantic.  Their nightingales make as many divisions as Italian singers.  But this is wandering from the subject; and, while I only meant to tell you what I could not do myself, I am telling you what others do ill..I will yet hazard one other opinion, though relative to composition in general.  There are two periods favourable to poets:  a rude age, when a genius may hazard any thing, and when nothing has been forestalled — the other is, when, after ages of barbarism and incorrection, a master or two produces models formed by purity and taste:  Virgil, Horace, Boileau, Corneille, Racine, Pope., exploded the licentiousness that reigned before them.  What happened?  Nobody dared to write in contradiction to the severity established; and very few had abilities to rival their masters. insipidity ensues, novelty is dangerous, and bombast usurps the throne which had been debased by a race of fain`eants.  This rhapsody will probably convince you, Sir, how much you was mistaken in setting any value on my judgment.

February will certainly be time enough for your piece to be finished.  I again beg you, Sir, to pay no deference to my criticisms, against your own cool reflections.  It is prudent to consult others before one ventures on publication; but every single person is as liable to be erroneous as an author.  An elderly man, as he gains experience, acquires prejudices too:  Day, old age has generally two faults; it is too quick-sighted into the faults of the time being, and too blind to the faults that reigned in his own youth, which, having partaken of or having admired, though injudiciously, he recollects with complacence.  A key in writers for I confess, too, that there must be two distinct views of writers 4 the stage, one of which is more allowable to them than to other authors.  The one is durable fame; the other, peculiar to dramatic authors, the view of writing to the present taste, (and, perhaps, as