The allusion to Miss Seward, the “Swan of Lichfield,” by Sir William refers to the following passage in one of Mary’s letters: “Have you seen Miss Seward’s Letters? The names of her correspondents are tempting, but alas! though addressed to all the eminent literati of the last half-century, all the epistles bear the signature of Anna Seward.... Did she not owe some of her fame, think you, to writing printed books at a time when it was quite as much as most women could do to read them?... I was always a little shocked at the sort of reputation she bore in poetry. Sometimes affected, sometimes _fade_, sometimes pedantic and sometimes tinselly, none of her works were ever simple, graceful, or natural. Her letters ... are affected, sentimental and lackadaisical to the highest degree. Who can read a page of Miss Seward’s writings on any subject without finding her out at once [as] the pedantic coquette and cold-hearted sensibility monger?” “Anna Seward,” continues Miss Mitford, “sees nothing to admire in Cowper’s letters—in letters (the playful ones of course I mean) which would have immortalized him had the _Task_ never been written, and which (much as I admire the playful wit of the two illustrious namesakes Lady M. W. and Mrs. Montagu) are in my opinion the only perfect specimens of epistolary composition in the English language.... They have to me, at least, all the properties of grace; a charm now here, now there; a witchery rather felt in its effect than perceived in its cause.” “The attraction of Horace Walpole’s letters,” she adds, “is very different, though almost equally strong. The charm which lurks in them is one for which we have no term, and our Gallic neighbours seem to have engrossed both the word and the quality. _Elles sont piquantes_ to the highest degree. If you read but a sentence you feel yourself spellbound till you have read the volume.” On another occasion Mary discusses the merits of Pope. She holds the same opinion as that of Sir William respecting his letters “which,” as she says, “affect to be unaffected and work so hard to seem quite at their ease.” “Pope is,” she remarks, “even in his poetry, of a lower flight and a weaker grasp than his predecessor [Dryden].... _They_ must be born without an ear who can prefer the melodious monotony of Pope to the stateliness, the ease, the infinite variety of Dryden. I should as soon think of preferring the tinkling guitar to the full-toned organ!