[578] These innocent peculiarities were in a less degree retained to the end of life by this truly amiable and interesting man.
[579] This letter contained the history of a servant's cruelty to a post-horse, which a reader of humanity could not wish to see in print. But the postscript describes so pleasantly the signal influence of a poet's reputation on the spirit of a liberal innkeeper, that it surely ought not to be suppressed.—Hayley.
[580] Private correspondence.
[581] "Sir Thomas More," a tragedy.
[582] See a similar instance, recorded in the Memoirs of Mrs. Hannah More, of the Bristol Milk-woman, Mrs. Yearsley.
[583] Private correspondence.
[584] Johnson's remark on Milton's Latin poems is as follows: "The Latin pieces are lusciously elegant; but the delight which they afford is rather by the exquisite imitation of the ancient writers, by the purity of the diction and the harmony of the numbers, than by any power of invention or vigour of sentiment. They are not all of equal value; the elegies excel the odes; and some of the exercises on gunpowder treason might have been spared."
He, however, quotes with approbation the remark of Hampton, the translator of Polybius, that "Milton was the first Englishman who, after the revival of letters, wrote Latin verses with classic elegance."—See Johnson's Life of Milton.
[585] We are indebted to Mr. Buchanan for having suggested to Cowper the outline of the poem called "The Four Ages," viz. infancy, youth, middle age, and old age. The writer was acquainted with this respectable clergyman in his declining years. He was considered to be a man of cultivated mind and taste.
[586] The labour of transcribing Cowper's version.