Seriously, Madam, I am surprised-and chiefly at the kind of genius of this unhappy female.(537) Her ear, as you remark, is perfect but that, being a gift of nature, amazes me less.  Her expressions are more exalted than poetic; and discover taste, as you say, rather than discover flights of fancy and wild ideas, as one should expect.  I should therefore advise her quitting blank verse, which wants the highest colouring, to distinguish it from prose; whereas her taste, and probably good sense, might give sufficient beauty to her rhymes.  Her not being learned is another reason against her writing in blank verse.  Milton employed all his reading, nay, all his geographic knowledge, to enrich his language, and succeeded.  They who have imitated him in that particular, have been mere monkeys; and they who neglected it, flat and poor.

Were I not persuaded by the samples you have sent me, Madam, that this woman has talents, I should not advise encouraging her propensity, lest it should divert her from the care of her family, and, after the novelty is over, leave her worse than she was.  When the late Queen patronized Stephen Duck,(538) who was only a wonder at first, and had not genius enough to support the character he had promised, twenty artisans and labourers turned poets, and starved.(539) Your poetess can scarce be more miserable than she is, and even the reputation of being an authoress may procure her customers:  but as poetry is one of your least excellencies, Madam (your virtues will forgive ’me), I am sure you will not only give her counsels for her works, but for her conduct; and your gentleness will blend them so judiciously, that she will mind the friend as well as the mistress.  She must remember that she is a Lactilla, not a Pastora; and is to tend real cows, not Arcadian sheep.

What! if I should go a step farther, dear Madam, and take the liberty of reproving you for putting into this poor woman’s hands such a frantic thing as The Castle of Otranto?  It was fit for nothing but the age in which it was written:  an age in which much was known; that -required only to be amused, nor cared whether its amusements were conformable to truth and the models of good sense; that could not be spoiled; was in no danger of being too credulous and rather wanted to be brought back to imagination, than to be led astray by it:-but you will have made a hurly-burly in this poor woman’s head, which it cannot develop and digest.

I will not reprove, without suggesting something in my turn.  Give her Dryden’s Cock and Fox, the standard of good sense, poetry, nature, and ease.  I would recommend others of his tales:  but her imagination is already too gloomy, and should be enlivened; for which reason I do not name Mr. Gray’s Eton Ode and Churchyard.’  Prior’s Solomon (for I doubt his Alma, though far superior, is too learned for her limited reading,) would be very proper.  In truth, I think the cast of the age (I mean in its