ABSTRACT
Poetry has been an object of my affection from my earliest years. I remember with what avidity I copied the first verses I saw, which as far as I can now recollect were those of Bunyan and Quarles. Beginning with and deriving Pleasure from such Authors, thou wilt readily conceive the Increse of such Pleasures when I became acquainted with a Milton and a Cowper, a Collins and a Goldsmith, the two last of which to me possess a Charm in their Writings which like other charms is difficult to define, but which unquestionably confirms them to be Poets: that charm I also feel the force of in many parts of the two elegant Volumes thy kindness has transmitted to me, which after perusing and re-perusing I shall set up as a Monument in my little Library of thy Friendship. I never knew any Volumes that one would like so well to take with one into the Fields, and there sit down under a Tree to read: this I have done and shall continue to do, possessing at this Time, for which I am obliged to thee, a portion I trust, of the spirit with which they were written. The subjects are numerous and well adapted to the rural Reading I have hinted at, and when so reading it will heighten the Enjoyment to suppose they were several of them wrote in such circumstances. Thy Journey among the Alps is new to me, the Pictures there are vivid, as the Time of Life in which they were drawn; I hope thou hast not omitted many of them, I wish thou hadst given us them all: still more I wish thou hadst finished
