you fee, to have a long converfation with

you.

Pray feal, in future, with better wax, and more care. Something colder than one of my kiffes might have thawed the feal of yesterday. But I will not talk of thawing. Had the froft and fnow continued, I had ftill been with you at H.

The remainder of this (my second sheet of paper, obferve) fhall be filled with what I think a valuable curiofity. The officer, whom you faw with me on Sunday, is lately come from America. He gave it me, and affures me it is original. It will explain itfelf. Would I might be in your dear, little, enchanted dreffing-room, while you read it!

The Speech of a Shawanefe Chief, to Lord Dunmore.

"I appeal to any white man to-day, if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him not meat; if he ever came cold or naked, and I gave him not clothing.

During

During the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle, ignominious, in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love of the Whites, that those of mine own country pointed at me as they paffed by, and faid, "Logan is the friend of white men." I had even thought to live with you. But the injuries of one among you, did away that thought, and dragged me from my cabin of peace. Colonel Creffop, the laft fpring, in cold blood, cut off all the relations of Logan, fparing neither women nor children. There runs not a drop of the blood of Logan in the veins of any human creature. This called on me for revenge. I have fought it. I have killed many. Revenge has been fully glutted.

"For my country-I rejoice at the beams of peace. But, harbour not the thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn his heel to fave his life.

"Who is there to mourn for Logan?

Not one."

LET

LETTER

To the Same.

XIV.

Huntingdon, 22d Feb. 1776.

How filly we were, both of us, not to recollect your favourite Jenny? and did not Jamie think of her either?

Though my mother did na speak,

She look'd in my face, till my heart was fit to break."

Was not this exactly the inftance we wanted?

Something more has occurred to me on the fame fubject. Rather than not write to you, or than write to you as defcriptively as recollection fometimes tempts me, I know you would have me write nonfenfe. In Hervey's" Meditations" are two paffages as fine as they are fimple and natural.

"A beam or two finds its way through "the grates, and reflects a feeble glimmer

" from

"from the nails of the coffins."-" Should "the haggard skeleton lift a clattering hand-." In the latter, I know not whether the epithet haggard might not be fpared.

Governor Holwell, in the account of the fufferings at the black hole at Calcutta, when he speaks of the length of time he fupported nature by catching the drops, occafioned by the heat, which fell from his head and face, adds these words—“ You cannot imagine how unhappy I was when any one of them efcaped my tongue!" What a fcene! The happiness, the existence of a fellow creature, dependent upon being able to catch a drop of his own fweat! Shakespeare's fancy could not have invented, nor ever did invent, any thing more fublime; for this is nature, and nature itself is fublimity.-People write upon a particular fituation, they do not put themfelves in the fituation. We only fee the writer, fitting in his ftudy, and working up a story to amufe or to frighten; not the identical

identical Tom Jones, nor Macbeth himfelf.

Can you become the very being you defcribe? Can you look round, and mark only that which ftrikes in your new character, and forget all which ftruck in your own? Can you bid your comfortable study, be the prison of innocence or the house of mourning? Can you transform your garret of indigence into the palace of pleasure?

If you cannot, you had better clear shoes, than endeavour by writings to intereft the imagination. We cannot even bear to fee an author only peeping over the top of every page, to obferve how we like him. The player I would call a corporal actor, the writer a mental actor. Garrick would in vain have put his face and his body in all the fituations of Lear, if Shakespeare had not before put his mind in them all. In a thousand inftances, we have nothing to do but to copy nature, if we can only get her to fit our pencil. And yet-how few of

the