“I am actually an inhabitant of Newcastle, and am taking out my freedom, not out of a gold box, but by entering into all the diversions of the place. I was at a musical entertainment yesterday morning, at a concert last night, at a musical entertainment this morning. I have bespoken a play for to-morrow night, and shall go to a ball on choosing a Mayor on Monday night.” [Page heading: MR. RUST] To this Lord Lyttelton replies from Hagley on October 18-- “You tell me, good Madonna, that you are grown _as robust as a milkmaid_. If you are so, I have no objection to your going to Balls, Plays or Poppet Shows if you please every night; but you have sometimes the spirits of a milkmaid without the strength. However, I believe Diversions are better for you than too much reading, and therefore I am not sorry you have no time to committ excess with your books. If I were to live with you, I would not trust you in a Library or alone in your Room but at stated hours with proper Intervals of exercise and conversation.... I am glad to hear we shall have another volume of Highland Poems. To stay your stomach (for, as I know, your appetite is eager towards them), I send you a copy of four of a later date than the others now printed, and not much inferior to them in the Natural Beauty and Force of Description, tho’ not, I think, so bold and sublime. Being purely descriptive, they could have nothing dramatic or passionate in them as most of the others have. But at the end of these you will find some objections I have as a Chronologist and Historian to the authenticity of the printed ones which it will be hard to get over. Yet I am not persuaded myself they are not genuine, for who can write so now? Mr. Rust[291] was so struck with them, he read them every morning and evening aloud to the Family as a Chaplain does Prayers. And the more I consider them, the more I admire them. I have seen some specimens in a Latin translation of the Poetry of the two most admired Welsh Bards, but they don’t in any degree approach to the greatness and the Beauty of these. I am charmed with your comparison between the Greek Plays and Shakespear. He is indeed unequalled in the power of painting Nature as she is and giving you sometimes the utmost energy of a Character of a Passion in short Stroke and Dash of his Pen. I also agree with you that the moral Reflexions in Shakespear’s Plays are much more affecting by coming warm from the Heart of the interested persons, than putt into the mouth of a chorus, as in the Greek Plays. I am glad you like my favourite Philoctetes. The faults you find with the Ajax are perfectly just, yet I feel the grief of that hero when he returns to his Reason, and especially in the scene between him and Termessa. Suppose Belisarius had gone mad with the unjust Disgrace he had suffer’d, and in his Distraction had done actions which dishonoured and exposed him to the Ridicule of his enemies,