rd of; one a secretary of state,
the other enjoying leisure, with dignity, in two lucrative
employments; and you, though your religious profession is an obstacle
to Court promotion, and disqualifies you from filling civil
employments, have found the _philosopher's stone_; since, by making
the Iliad pass through your poetical crucible into an English form,
without losing aught of it's original beauty, you have drawn the
golden current of Pactolus to Twickenham. I call this finding the
philosopher's stone, since you alone found out the secret, and
nobody else has got into it. A----n and T----l tried it, but their
experiments failed; and they lost, if not their money, at least a
certain portion of their fame in the trial--while you touched the
mantle of the divine bard, and imbibed his spirit. I hope we shall
have the Odyssey soon from your happy hand; and I think I shall
follow, with singular pleasure, the traveller Ulysses, who was an
observer of men and manners, when he travels in your harmonious
numbers. I love him much better than the hot-headed son of Peleus,
who bullied his general, cried for his mistress, and so on. It is
true, the excellence of the Iliad does not depend upon his merit or
dignity; but I wish, nevertheless, that Homer had chosen a hero
somewhat less pettish and less fantastic: a perfect hero is
chimerical and unnatural, and consequently uninstructive; but it is
also true, that while the epic hero ought to be drawn with the
infirmities that are the lot of humanity, he ought never to be
represented as extremely absurd. But it becomes me ill to play the
critic; so I take my leave of you for this time, and desire you will
believe me, with the highest esteem, Your's, &c.

LET. LVI.

[Footnote: As this letter is the supplement to a preceding one, which
is not come to the hands of the editor, it was probably, on that
account, sent without a date. It seems evidently to have been
written after Lady M. W. M. had fixed her residence in Italy.]

To THE COUNTESS OF ----.

_Saturday-Florence_.

I SET out from Bologne (sic) the moment I had finished the letter I
wrote you on Monday last, and shall now continue to inform you of the
things that have struck me most in this excursion. Sad roads--hilly
and rocky--between Bologna and Fierenzuola. Between this latter
place and Florence, I went out of my road to visit the monastery of
La Trappe, which is of French origin, and one of th