rsed Barbauld crew, those blights and blasts of
all that is human in man and child.

As to the translations, let me do two or three hundred lines, and then
do you try the nostrums upon Stuart in any way you please. If they go
down, I will bray more. In fact, if I got or could but get L50 a year
only, in addition to what I have, I should live in affluence.

Have you anticipated it, or could not you give a parallel of Bonaparte
with Cromwell, particularly as to the contrast in their deeds affecting
_foreign_ States? Cromwell's interference for the Albigenses,
B[onaparte]'s against the Swiss. Then religion would come in; and Milton
and you could rant about our countrymen of that period. This is a hasty
suggestion, the more hasty because I want my supper. I have just
finished Chapman's Homer. Did you ever read it? It has most the
continuous power of interesting you all along, like a rapid original, of
any, and in the uncommon excellence of the more finished parts goes
beyond Fairfax or any of 'em. The metre is fourteen syllables, and
capable of all sweetness and grandeur, Cowper's ponderous blank verse
detains you every step with some heavy Miltonism; Chapman gallops off
with you his own free pace. Take a simile, for example. The council
breaks up,--

"Being abroad, the earth was overlaid
With fleckers to them, that came forth; as when of frequent
bees
Swarms rise out of a hollow rock, repairing the degrees
Of _their egression endlessly,--with ever rising new_
From forth their sweet nest; as their store, still as it faded,
grew,

"_And never would cease sending forth her dusters to the spring_.
They still crowd out so: this flock here, that there, belaboring
The loaded flowers. So," etc.

What _endless egression of phrases_ the dog commands!

Take another.--Agamemnon, wounded, bearing hiss wound, heroically for
the sake of the army (look below) to a woman in labor:--

"He with his lance, sword, mighty stones, poured his heroic wreak
On other squadrons of the foe, whiles yet warm blood did break
Thro' his cleft veins: but when the wound was quite exhaust and crude,
The eager anguish did approve his princely fortitude.
As when most sharp and bitter pangs distract a laboring dame,
Which the divine Ilithiae, that rule the painful frame
Of human childbirth, pour on her; the Ilithiae that are
The daughters of Saturnia; with whose extreme repair
The woman i