Of condescending Gentleness address
Thy kindred People.
It was Miss Seward's opinion that the neglect of Mr. Polwhele's "poetic writings" was a disgrace to literary England, from which we conclude that the reverend author outwore the patience of his readers. "Mature in dulness from his earliest years," he had wisely adopted a profession which gave his qualities room for expansion. What his congregation must have suffered when he addressed it with "condescending gentleness," we hardly like to think; but free-born Englishmen, who were so fortunate as not to hear him, refused to make good their loss by reading the "English Orator," even after it had been revised by a bishop. Miss Seward praised it highly; in return for which devotion she was hailed as a "Parnassian sister" in six benedictory stanzas.
Still gratitude her stores among,
Shall bid the plausive poet sing;
And, if the last of all the throng
That rise on the poetic wing,
Yet not regardless of his destined way,
If Seward's envied sanction stamps the lay.
The Swan, indeed, was never without admir-
