which fhe feems to underftand decorums even better than the Western beauty. You who have refided fo long in China will readily acknowledge the picture to be taken from Nature; and, by being acquainted with the Chinese cuftoms, will better apprehend the lady's meaning.

From YAOUA to YAYA.

PAPA infifts upon one, two, three, four hundred taels from the colonel my lover, before he parts with a lock of my hair. Ho, how I wish the dear creature may be able to produce the money, and pay papa my fortune. The colonel is reckoned the politeft man in all Shenfi. The firft vifit he paid at our houfe; mercy, what ftooping, and cringing, and ftopping, and figeting, and going back, and creeping forward, there was between him and papa, one would have thought he had got the feventeen books of ceremonies all by heart. When he was come into the hall he flourished his hands three times in a very graceful manner. Papa, who would not be out-done, flourished his four times; upon this the colonel began again, and both thus continued flourishing for fome minutes in the politeft manner imaginable. I was pofted in the ufual place behind the fcreen, where I faw the whole ceremony through a flit. Of this the colonel was fenfible, for papa informed him. I would have given the world to have fhewn him my little fhoes, but had no opportunity. It was the first time I had ever the happinefs of feeing any man but papa, and I vow my dear Yaya, I thought my three fouls would actually have fled from my lips. Ho, but he looked moft charmingly, he is reckoned the beft fhaped man in the whole province, for he is very fat, and very short; but even thofe natural advantages are improved by his dress, which is fashionable paft defcription. His head was

clofe

clofe fhaven, all but the crown, and the hair of that was braided into a most beautiful tail, that reached down to his heels, and was terminated by a bunch of yellow rofes. Upon his first entering the room, I could eafily perceive he had been highly perfumed with affafoetida. But then his looks, his looks my dear Yaya were irrefiftible. He kept his eyes ftedfaftly fixed on the wall during the whole ceremony, and I fincerely believe no accident could have difcompofed his gravity, or drawn his eyes away. After a polite filence of two hours, he gallantly begged to have the finging woman introduced, purely for my amufement. After one of them had for fome time entertained us with her voice, the colonel and fhe retired for fome minutes together. I thought they would never have come back; I muft own he is a moft agreeable creature. Upon his return, they again renewed the concert, and he continued to gaze upon the wall as ufual, when, in lefs than half an hour more! Ho, but he retired out of the room with another. He is indeed a most agreeable

creature.

When he came to take his leave, the whole ceremony began afrefh; papa would fee him to the door, but the colonel fwore he would rather fee the earth turned upfide down than permit him to ftir a single ftep, and papa was at laft obliged to comply. As foon as he was got to the door, papa went out to fee him on horfeback; hère they continued half an hour bowing and cringing, before one would mount or the other go in, but the colonel was at laft victorious. He had fcarce gone an hundred paces from the houfe when papa running out halloo'd after him, A good journey; upon which the colonel returned, and would fee papa into his houfe before ever he would depart. He was no fooner got home than he fent me a very fine prefent of duck eggs painted of twenty different colours. His generolity I own has

L 4

has won me. I have ever fince been trying over the eight letters of good fortune, and have great hopes. All I have to apprehend is that after he has married me, and that I am carried to his house close shut up in my chair, when he comes to have the first fight of my face, he may fhut me up a fecond time and fend me back to papa. However I fhall appear as fine as poffible; mamma and I have been to buy the cloaths for my wedding. I am to have a new fong whang in my hair, the beak of which will reach down to my nofe; the milliner from whom we bought that and our ribbons cheated us as if she had no confcience, and fo to quiet mine I cheated her. All this is fair you know. I remain, my dear Yaya,

Your ever faithful,

LETTER

XXXIX.

YAOUA,

FROM THE SAME.

YOU have always teftified the highest esteem for the English poets, and thought them not inferior to the Greeks, Romans, or even the Chinese in the art. But it is now thought even by the English themselves that the race of their poets is extinct; every day produces fome pathetic exclamation upon the decadence of tafte and genius. Pegafus, fay they, has flipped the bridle from his mouth, and our modern bards attempt to direct his flight by catching him by the tail.

Yet, my friend, it is only among the ignorant that fuch difcourfes prevail, men of true difcern

ment

ment can see several poets ftill among the English, fome of whom equal if not surpass their predeceffors. The ignorant term that alone poetry which is couched in a certain number of fyllables in every line, where a vapid thought is drawn out into a number of verfes of equal length, and perhaps pointed with rhymes at the end. But glowing fentiment, ftriking imagery, concife expreffion, natural defcription, and modulated periods are full fufficient entirely to fill up my idea of this art, and make way to every paffion.

If my idea of poetry therefore be juft, the Englifh are not at prefent fo deftitute of poetical merit as they feem to imagine. I can fee feveral poets in difguife among them; men furnished with that ftrength of foul, fublimity of fentiment, and grandeur of expreffion, which conftitutes the character. Many of the writers of their modern odes, fonnets, tragedies, or rebuffes, it is true, deferve not the name, though they have done nothing but clink rhymes and meafure fyllables for years together; their Johnson's and Smollett's are truly poets; though for aught I know they never made a fingle verfe in their whole lives.

In every incipient language the poet and the profe writer are very diftinct in their qualifications: the poet ever proceeds firft, treading unbeaten paths, enriching his native funds, and employed in new adventures. The other follows with more cautious steps, and though flow in his motions, treafures up every useful or pleafing difcovery. But when once all the extent and the force of the language is known, the poet then feems to reft from his labour, and is at length overtaken by his affiduous purfuer. Both characters are then blended into one, the hiftorian and orator catch all the poet's fire, and leave him no real mark of diftinction except the iteration of numbers regularly returning. Thus in the decline of antient European learning, Seneca, though he

wrote

wrote in profe, is as much a poet as Lucan, and Longinus, though but a critic, more fublime than Apollonius.

From this then it appears that poetry is not difcontinued, but altered among the English at prefent; the outward form feems different from what it was, but poetry ftill continues internally the fame; the only queftion remains whether the metric feet ufed by the good writers of the laft age, or the profaic numbers employed by the good writers of this, be preferable. And here the practice of the laft age appears to me fuperior; they fubmitted to the reftraint of numbers and fimilar founds; and this reftraint, inftead of diminishing, augmented the force of their fentiment and ftyle. Fancy reftrained may be compared to a fountain which plays higheft by diminishing the aperture. Of the truth of this maxim in every language, every fine writer is perfectly fenfible from his own experience, and yet to explain the reafon would be perhaps as difficult as to make a frigid genius profit by the dif

covery.

There is ftill another reason in favour of the practice of the laft age, to be drawn from the variety of modulation. The mufical period in profe is confined to a very few changes; the numbers in verfe are capable of infinite variation. I speak not now from the practice of modern verfe writers, few of whom have any idea of mufical variety, but run on in the fame monotonous flow through the whole poem; but rather from the example of their former poets, who were tolerable mafters of this variety, and alfo from a capacity in the language of still admitting various unanticipated mufic.

Several rules have been drawn up for varying the poetic measure, and critics have elaborately talked of accents and fyllables, but good fenfe and a fine ear, which rules can never teach, are what alone can