My House and Room where I keep the Hygrometer are very dry, yet I almost invariably find the Atmosphere outside the window to be dryer than within,

THE

Mr. URBAN,

April 25.

AMONGST the numerous readers

of the Magazine, I must acknowledge myself one who was much pleased with the inscriptions, inserted some months since, in the grounds of the ingenious and amiable William Lisle Bowles, A. M. and was led, on perusal of them, to recollect that there were several, little known, in the different rural retreats and places of resort, in the neighbourhood of the Metropolis. I have transcribed from a collection among my papers four, by Authors whose compositions have been generally admired; and if these are approved and favourably received, others shall follow. J. C.

the spleen,

Or the gay city's idle pleasures cloy,
Swift as my changing wish I shift the
scene;
[joy.
And now the country, now the town en-
GILBERT WEST, LL. D.
II.
In the Garden of JOHN SCOTT, Esq. at
Amwell. In an Alcove.

To scenes where Taste and Genius dwell,
Unwillingly we bid farewell :

For these, of more than mortal birth,
Strangers and sojourners on earth,
Have far from every vulgar road
At Amwell 'fix'd their fair abode.
JOHN LANGHORNE, D. D.
III.

In the same Garden, in another Temple,
under the words MIHI ET AMICIS.
Thy friends have access to a nobler part,
They share the open temple of thy heart!
O may no sighs from that calm region
borne,
[forlorn.
Thy grove's soft echoes change to sounds
To please by art, by nature's charms to
please,
The first great object is a mind at ease.
JOHN LANGHORNE, D. D.

IV.

On a Stone erected on planting a Grove
of Oaks at Chillington, the Seat of
THOS. GIFFORD, Esq. 1790.
Other stones the æra tell
When some feeble mortal fell:
I stand here to date the birth
Of these hardy sons of earth.
Which shall longest brave the sky,
Storm and frost, these oaks or I?
Pass an age or two away,
I must moulder and decay:
But the year that crumbles me
Shall invigorate the tree;
Spread the branch, dilate its size,
Lift its summit to the skies.

WILLIAM Cowper.

P. S. In the quotation from Quinctilian, p. 291 in the last Magazine, for mutant read mulcent.

In the Verses on the Monument at the Hot Wells Chapel, Bristol, by Hannah More, on the Lady of Sir James Stonhouse, for the line

In death thy last best lesson still impart, Read

Let death thy strongest lesson then impart.

The lines on the Tomb in the Churchyard at Hertingfordbury, near Hertford, were written by Sir Brook Boothby, and make part of the Inscription in Ashbourne Church, inscribed to his Parents.

Mr. URBAN,

May 17. I send you a copy of Mr. Warton's verses. An old house and oratory, called Bret's Hall, were pulled down about the year 1750, and the stones of the oratory removed into the old gardens of Ansley Hall, where in a small dale they were formed into a cell for an hermitage, and at present remain so. Mr. T. Warton, the celebrated Poet Laureat, wrote the annexed copy of verses there in April 1758:

N answer to a query in p. 310, I

"Beneath this stoney roof reclin'd,
I sooth to peace my pensive mind;
And while, to shade my lowly cave,
Embowering trees their umbrage wave;
And while the maple dish is mine,
The beechen cup unstain'd with wine,
I scorn the gay licentious crowd,
Nor heed the toys that deck the proud.

Within

Within my limits lone and still,
The black bird sings in artless trill;
Fast by my couch, congenial guest,
The wren has built her mossy nest;
From social scenes, by Nature wise,
To lurk with innocence she flies;
Here hopes in safe repose to dwell,
⚫ Nor aught suspects the sylvan cell.

At morn and eve I take my round,
To mark how blows my flowery mound;
And every budding primrose count,
That trimly paints my blooming mount:
Or o'er the sculptures quaint and rude,
Which deck my gloomy solitude,
I teach in many a wreath to stray
Fantastic ivy's gadding spray.
While such pure joys retirement wait,
Who but would smile at guilty state?
Who but would wish his holy lot
In calm Oblivion's thoughtful grot?
Who but would cast his pomp away,
To take my staff and mantle grey;
And to the world's tumultuous stage
Prefer the peaceful Hermitage? T.W."
"These verses, as printed in the
several editions of Mr. Warton's Works,

are taken from an altered copy, published
by himself, with other Poems, in 12mo.
London, 1777.-The facts are as follows:
Mr. Warton was tutor to the last Earl
and late Marquis of Donegall, of Trinity
College, and as such visited Ansley Hall
in the Easter vacation 1758, when he
wrote and left these verses in the cell.
He never saw Ansley Hall after that time
above once, if ever, and that the follow-
ing year. Lord Donegall leaving Oxford
in 1759, or thereabouts, came of age in
1760; and of course all connexions be-
tween Mr. Warton and Ansley Hall
ceased. The two poems are now before
the publick; and let them be the judges
whether the natural and local simplicity
of the original, written upon the spot,
with all the objects around him, and on
the spur of the moment, is not prefera-
ble to the stiff and affected style of the
altered copy published by the finished
Poet, afterwards Poet Laureat, certainly
above 18, if not nearer 20 years after he
had ceased visiting Ansley Hall, and of
course forgot all the locality of the Poem.
And as the copy he has given the publick
is very different from the original, having
little or no resemblance (except in the
first and last words, and first verse, and
this is even mutilated, and the word
which
"in the second verse,
co-genial,"
he still retained), I verily believe he wrote
this entirely from memory, without a
scrap of the original Poem in his posses-
sion, though he knew I was resident at
Oxford at the very time, and could have
furnished him with a copy at any time,
as I always carried it in my port-feuille,

Mr. URBAN,

May 18. ANCTIMONIOUSNESS and Piety distinct things. A good man

SANO

is influenced by religion in every thing which he says, or does; but he does not make it a practice to say he is. If I ask a man the hour of the day, or the road to the next village, and he cannot tell me without obtruding some scriptural phrase, or some moral reflection, I cannot regard this, which he perhaps deems piety, otherwise than as an instance of using the word of God, or serious things, lightly and irreverently. If on the Lord's day I take a walk, for recreation or for health, alone or with a friend, without interfering with any duty, public or private, there are persons who hold this to be absolutely sinful. The very same men, if they are consistent (which, to say the truth, they very seldom are) would have condemned our Lord's disciples for rubbing in their hands a few ears of corn, as they walked through the fields on the Sabbath day. Two noted Infidels of the age we live in, as I have been credibly informed, were one of them a Methodist,' and the other the sou of a Dissenting Minister, whose father chastized him for playing with a cat, on what he, I suppose, called the Sabbath. In this, as in many other instances, Puritanism had the same effect as Popery often has abroad, where men of some reading and of some reflection, but of shallow judgment, rejecting the absurdities and fooleries of the religion which they see, reject all religion.

The "liberal maxim," alleged by a Correspondent, p. 311, "De mortuis nil nisi bonum," should perhaps, if the deceased left any literary works behind them, be altered into, "De mortuis nil nisi verum." Your

Correspondent is right in supposing I was not "acquainted" with the late Rev. Sir James Stonhouse, though I knew several of his near relations. My conception of his character was formed partly from what I have generally heard of him, and partly from what I see in his writings; and on

these