woful invention were the nasty poultry that dunged on his dinner, and ships on fire turned into Nereids! a barn metamorphosed into a cascade in a pantomime is full as sublime an effort of genius.  I do not know whether the Arabian Nights are of Oriental origin or not:(641) I should think not, because I never saw any other Oriental composition that was not bombast without genius, and figurative without nature; like an Indian screen, where you see little men on the foreground, and larger men hunting tigers above in the air, which they take for perspective.  I do not think the Sultaness’s narratives very natural or very probable, but there is a wildness in them that captivates.  However, if you could wade through two octavos(642) of Dame Piozzi’s thoughts and so’s and I trow’s, and cannot listen to seven volumes of Scheherezade’s narrations, I will sue for a divorce infibro Parnassi, and Boccalini shall be my proctor.  The cause will be a counterpart to the sentence of the Lacedoemonian, who was condemned for breach of the peace, by saying in three words what he might have said in two.

You are not the first Eurydice that has sent her husband to the devil, as you have kindly proposed to me; but I will not undertake the jaunt, for if old Nicholas Pluto should enjoin me not to look back to you, I should certainly forget the prohibition like my predecessor.  Besides, I am a little too close to take a voyage twice which I am so soon to repeat; and should be laughed at by the good folks on the other side of the water, if I proposed coming back for a twinkling Only.  No; I choose as long as I can

“Still with my fav’rite Berrys to remain."(643)

So you was not quite satisfied, though you ought to have been transported, with King’s College Chapel, because it has no aisles, like every common cathedral.  I suppose you would object to a bird of paradise, because it has no legs, but shoots to heaven in a trait, and does not rest on earth.  Criticism and comparison spoil many tastes.  You should admire all bold and unique essays that resemble nothing else; the Botanic Garden, the Arabian Nights, and King’s Chapel are above all rules:  and how preferable is what no one can imitate, to all that is imitated even from the best models!  Your partiality to the pageantry of popery I do not approve, and I doubt whether the world will not be a loser (in its visionary enjoyments) by the extinction of that religion, as it was by the decay of chivalry and the proscription of the heathen deities.  Reason has no invention; and as plain sense will never be the legislator of human affairs, it is fortunate when taste happens to be regent.

(639) Miss More, in a letter written at this time to Walpole, says, “How you do scold me! but I don’t care for your scolding; and I don’t care for your wit neither, that I don’t. half as much as I care for a blow which I hear you have given yourself against a table.  I have known such very serious consequences arise from such accidents, that I beg of you to drown yourself in the “Veritable Arquebusade.”  Memoirs, vol. ii.  P. 158.-E.