rs that it is a cask, and that it will never be
anything better than a cask to all eternity. So if the god is content
with it, we must even wonder at his taste and be so too.

_To the Same_

Olney, _March_ 6, 1786. Your opinion has more weight with me than that
of all the critics in the world. To give you a proof of it, I make you a
concession that I would hardly have made to them all united. I do not
indeed absolutely covenant that I will discard all my elisions, but I
hereby bind myself to discard as many of them as, without sacrificing
energy to sound, I can. It is incumbent on me, in the meantime, to say
something in justification of the few I shall retain, that I may not
seem a poet mounted on a mule rather than on Parnassus. In the first
place, "the" is a barbarism. We are indebted for it to the Celts, or the
Goths, or the Saxons, or perhaps to them all. In the two best languages
that ever were spoken, the Greek and the Latin, there is no similar
encumbrance of expression to be found. Secondly, the perpetual use of it
in our language is, to us miserable poets, attended with two great
inconveniences.

Our verse consisting of only ten syllables, it not infrequently happens
that the fifth part of a line is to be engrossed, and necessarily too,
unless elision prevents it, by this abominable intruder; and, which is
worse in my account, open vowels are continually the consequence--_the_
element--_the_ air, etc. Thirdly, the French, who are equally chargeable
with the English with barbarism in this particular, dispose of their
_le_ and their _la_ without ceremony, and always take care that they
shall be absorbed, both in verse and in prose, in the vowel that
immediately follows them. Fourthly, and I believe lastly, the practice
of cutting short "the" is warranted by Milton, who of all English poets
that ever lived, had certainly the finest ear.

Thou only critic of my verse that is to be found in all the earth, whom
I love, what shall I say in answer to your own objection to that
passage--

Softly he placed his hand
On th' old man's hand, and pushed it gently away.

I can say neither more nor less than this, that when our dear friend the
general sent me his opinion on the specimen, quoting those very words
from it, he added, "With this part I was particularly pleased; there is
nothing in poetry more descriptive."

Taste, my dear, is various; there is nothing so various, and even
between perso