NOTES TO LETTER XX.
[67] Note 1, page 470, line 5.
Where thrift and lavender and lad's-love bloom.
The lad's or boy's love of some counties is the plant southernwood, the artemisia abrotanum of botanists.
[68] Note 2, page 473, line 112.
Of some vile plot, and every wo adieu!
As this incident points out the work alluded to, I wish it to be remembered, that the gloomy tenour, the querulous melancholy of the story, is all I censure. The language of the writer is often animated, and is, I believe, correct; the characters well drawn, and the manners described from real life; but the perpetual occurrence of sad events, the protracted list of teasing and perplexing mischances, joined with much waspish invective, unallayed by pleasantry or sprightliness, and these continued through many hundred pages, render publications, intended for amusement and executed with ability, heavy and displeasing;—you find your favourite persons happy in the end; but they have teased you so much with their perplexities by the way, that you were frequently disposed to quit them in their distresses.
LETTER XXI.
ABEL KEENE.