as to practice, with their gaudy hot types and poetical vanities, they are much at one with the sinful.  Martin’s frontispiece is a very fine thing, let C.L. say what he please to the contrary.  Of the Poems, I like them as a volume better than any one of the preceding; particularly, Power and Gentleness; The Present; Lady Russell—­with the exception that I do not like the noble act of Curtius, true or false, one of the grand foundations of old Roman patriotism, to be sacrificed to Lady R.’s taking notes on her husband’s trial.  If a thing is good, why invidiously bring it into light with something better?  There are too few heroic things in this world to admit of our marshalling them in anxious etiquettes of precedence.  Would you make a poetn on the Story of Ruth (pretty Story!) and then say, Aye, but how much better is the story of Joseph and his Brethren!  To go on, the Stanzas to “Chalon” want the name of Clarkson in the body of them; it is left to inference.  The Battle of Gibeon is spirited again—­but you sacrifice it in last stanza to the Song at Bethlehem.  Is it quite orthodox to do so.  The first was good, you suppose, for that dispensation.  Why set the word against the word?  It puzzles a weak Christian.  So Watts’s Psalms are an implied censure on David’s.  But as long as the Bible is supposed to be an equally divine Emanation with the Testament, so long it will stagger weaklings to have them set in opposition.  Godiva is delicately touch’d.  I have always thought it a beautiful story characteristic of old English times.  But I could not help amusing myself with the thought—­if Martin had chosen this subject for a frontispiece, there would have been in some dark corner a white Lady, white as the Walker on the waves—­riding upon some mystical quadruped —­and high above would have risen “tower above tower a massy structure high” the Tenterden steeples of Coventry, till the poor Cross would scarce have known itself among the clouds, and far above them all, the distant Clint hills peering over chimney pots, piled up, Ossa-on-Olympus fashion, till the admiring Spectator (admirer of a noble deed) might have gone look for the Lady, as you must hunt for the other in the Lobster.  But M. should be made Royal Architect.  What palaces he would pile—­but then what parliamentary grants to make them good! ne’ertheless I like the frontispiece.  The Elephant is pleasant; and I am glad you are getting into a wider scope of subjects.  There may be too much, not religion, but too many good words into a book, till it becomes, as Sh. says of religion, a rhapsody of words.  I will just name that you have brought in the Song to the Shepherds in four or five if not six places.  Now this is not good economy.  The Enoch is fine; and here I can sacrifice Elijah to it, because ’tis illustrative only, and not disparaging of the latter prophet’s departure.  I like this best in the Book.  Lastly, I much like the Heron, ’tis exquisite:  know you Lord Thurlow’s Sonnet to a Bird of