Page:Dramas 2.pdf/353

Rh

Clermont! Have I the pleasure of beholding the writer of that beautiful sonnet, which has been mentioned to me with so much praise?

A poet who will think himself honoured indeed by the notice of such a critic as Lady Worrymore.

O no, Sir John! an ardent admirer of the Muses, but no critic.—To what a charming department of poetry, Mr. Clermont, you have devoted your pen! The sonnet!—the refined, the tender, the divine sonnet! O how it purifies and separates the mind from all commonness and meanness of Nature! Methinks the happy spirits in Elysium must converse with one another in sonnets.

What a happy time they must have of it, if they do!

It is a new and bright fancy of your Ladyship's, and never entered my mundane imagination before.

Has it not? O, I have worshipped Petrarch,