Book xxiv. line 622.

Without entering upon any minute analysis of the above passages, we consider them as exhibiting a happy specimen of poetic talent; and that Cowper has been successful in exemplifying the rules and principles which, in his preface, he declares to be indispensable in a version of Homer.

It may be interesting to literary curiosity to be presented with a summary of facts respecting Cowper's two versions of Homer.

This important undertaking commenced Nov. 21st, 1784, and was completed August 25th, 1790. During eight months of this intervening time, he was hindered by indisposition, so that he was occupied in the work, on the whole, five years and one month. On the 8th of September, 1790, his kinsman, the Rev. John Johnson, conveyed the translation to Johnson, the bookseller in St. Paul's Churchyard, with a view to its consignment to the press. During this period Cowper gave the work a second revisal, which he concluded March 4th, 1791. On July 1st of the same year the publication issued from the press. In 1793 there was a further revision, with the addition of explanatory notes, a second edition having been called for. In 1796 he engaged in a revisal of the whole work, which, owing to his state of mind and declining health, was not finished till March 8th, 1799. In January, 1800, he new-modelled a passage in his translation of the Iliad, where mention is made of the very ancient sculpture, in which Dædalus had represented the Cretan dance for Ariadne. This proved to be the last effort of his pen.[646]

[646] See Dr. Johnson's sketch of the Life of Cowper.

We have thought it due to Cowper's version to enter thus largely into an examination of its merits, from a persuasion that an undertaking of this magnitude, executed by the author of "The Task," claims to be considered as a part of our national literature. It remains only to be observed that the foreigner whom he mentions with so much estimation, as having aided him with his critical taste and erudition, was Fuseli the painter. He gratefully acknowledges his obligations in the following letters to Johnson the bookseller.

Weston, Feb. 11, 1790.

Dear Sir,--I am very sensibly obliged by the remarks of Mr. Fuseli, and beg that you will tell him so; they afford me opportunities of improvement which I shall not neglect. When he shall see the press-copy, he will be convinced of this, and will be convinced likewise, that, smart as he sometimes is, he spares me often, when I have no mercy on myself. He will see almost a new translation.... I assure you faithfully, that whatever my faults may be, to be easily or hastily satisfied with what I have written is not one of them.

Sept. 7, 1790.

It grieves me that, after all, I am obliged to go into public without the whole advantage of Mr. Fuseli's judicious strictures. The only consolation is, that I have not forfeited them by my own impatience. Five years are no small portion of a man's life, especially at the latter end of it, and in those five years, being a man of almost no engagements, I have done more in the way of hard work, than most could have done in twice the number. I beg you to present my compliments to Mr. Fuseli, with many and sincere thanks for the services that his own more important occupations would allow him to render me.

We add one more letter in this place, addressed to his bookseller, to show with what becoming resolution he could defend his poetical opinions when he considered them to be just.

Some accidental reviser of the manuscript had taken the liberty to alter a line in a poem of Cowper's:--this liberty drew from the offended poet the following very just and animated remonstrance, which we are anxious to preserve, because it elucidates with great felicity of expression his deliberate ideas on English versification.

* * * * *

"I did not write the line that has been tampered with, hastily, or without due attention to the construction of it; and what appeared to me its only merit is, in its present state, entirely annihilated.

"I know that ears of modern verse-writers are delicate to an excess, and their readers are troubled with the same squeamishness as themselves. So that if a line do not run as smooth as quicksilver, they are offended. A critic of the present day serves a poem as a cook serves a dead turkey, when she fastens the legs of it to a post, and draws out all the sinews. For this we may thank Pope; but unless we could imitate him in the closeness and compactness of his expression, as well as in the smoothness of his numbers, we had better drop the imitation, which serves no other purpose than to emasculate and weaken all we write. Give me a manly rough line, with a deal of meaning in it, rather than a whole poem full of musical periods, that have nothing but their oily smoothness to recommend them!

"I have said thus much, as I hinted in the beginning, because I have just finished a much longer poem than the last, which our common friend will receive by the same messenger that has the charge of this letter. In that poem there are many lines which an ear so nice as the gentleman's who made the above-mentioned alteration would undoubtedly condemn, and yet (if I may be permitted to say it) they cannot be made smoother without being the worse for it. There is a roughness on a plum, which nobody that understands fruit would rub off, though the plum would be much more polished without it. But, lest I tire you, I will only add, that I wish you to guard me from all such meddling, assuring you, that I always write as smoothly as I can, but that I never did, never will, sacrifice the spirit or sense of a passage to the sound of it."

Cowper was much affected at this time by a severe indisposition, to which he alludes in the following letter.

TO THOMAS PARK, ESQ.

Weston Underwood, April 27, 1792.

Dear Sir,--I write now merely to prevent any suspicion in your mind that I neglect you. I have been very ill, and for more than a fortnight unable to use the pen, or you should have heard long ere now of the safe arrival of your packet. I have revised the Elegy on Seduction,[647] but have not as yet been able to proceed farther. The best way of returning these which I have now in hand, will be to return them with those which you propose to send hereafter. I will make no more apologies for any liberties that it may seem necessary to me to take with your copies. Why do you send them, but that I may exercise that freedom, of which the very act of sending them implies your permission? I will only say, therefore, that you must neither be impatient nor even allow yourself to think me tardy, since assuredly I will not be more so than I needs must be. My hands are pretty full. Milton must be forwarded, and is at present hardly begun; and I have beside a numerous correspondence, which engrosses more of my time than I can at present well afford to it. I cannot decide with myself whether the lines in which the reviewers are so smartly noticed had better be expunged or not. Those lines are gracefully introduced and well written; for which reasons I should be loath to part with them. On the other hand, how far it may be prudent to irritate a body of critics, who certainly much influence the public opinion, may deserve consideration. It may be added too, that they are not all equally worthy of the lash: there are among them men of real learning, judgment, and candour. I must leave it, therefore, to your own determination.

[647] This Elegy is inserted in Mr. Park's volume of sonnets and miscellaneous poems.

I thank you for Thomson's Epitaph, on which I have only to remark (and I am sure that I do it not in a captious spirit) that, since the poet is himself the speaker, I cannot but question a little the propriety of the quotation subjoined. It is a prayer, and when the man is buried, the time of prayer is over. I know it may be answered, that it is placed there merely for the benefit of the reader; but all readers of tombstones are not wise enough to be trusted for such an interpretation.

I was well pleased with your poem on * * and equally well pleased with your intention not to publish it. It proves two points of consequence to an author:--both that you have an exuberant fancy, and discretion enough to know how to deal with it. The man is formidable for his ludicrous talent, as he has made himself contemptible by his use of it. To despise him therefore is natural, but it is wise to do it in secret.

Since the juvenile poems of Milton were edited by Warton, you need not trouble yourself to send them. I have them of his edition already.

I am, dear sir, Affectionately yours, W. C.

* * * * *

The marriage of Miss Stapleton, the Catharina of Cowper, to Sir John Throckmorton's brother (now Mr. Courtenay,) was one of those events which the muse of Cowper had ventured to anticipate; and he had now the happiness of finding his cherished wish fulfilled, and of thereby securing them as neighbours at the Hall.[648]

[648] This wish is expressed in the following lines:--

"With her book, and her voice, and her lyre, To wing all her moments at home, And with scenes that new rapture inspire, As oft as it suits her to roam; She will have just the life she prefers, With little to hope or to fear, _And ours would be pleasant as hers, Might we view her enjoying it here_."

See _Verses addressed to Miss Stapleton_, p. 343.

TO LADY HESKETH

Weston, May 20, 1792.

My dearest Coz,--I rejoice as thou reasonably supposest of me to do, in the matrimonial news communicated in your last. Not that it was altogether news for me, for twice I had received broad hints of it from Lady Frog, by letter, and several times _vivâ voce_ while she was here, But she enjoined _me_ secrecy as well as _you_, and you know that all secrets are safe with me; safer far than the winds in the bags of Æolus. I know not, in fact, the lady whom it would give me more pleasure to call Mrs. Courtenay, than the lady in question; partly because I know her, but especially because I know her to be all that I can wish in a neighbour.

I have observed that there is a regular alternation of good and evil in the lot of men, so that a favourable incident may be considered as the harbinger of an unfavourable one, and _vice versâ_. Dr. Madan's experience witnesses to the truth of this observation. One day he gets a broken head, and the next a mitre to heal it. I rejoice that he has met with so effectual a cure, though my joy is not unmingled with concern; for till now I had some hope of seeing him, but since I live in the north, and his episcopal call is in the west, that is a gratification, I suppose, which I must no longer look for.

My sonnet, which I sent you, was printed in the Northampton paper, last week, and this week it produced me a complimentary one in the same paper, which served to convince me, at least by the matter of it, that my own was not published without occasion, and that it had answered its purpose.[649]

[649] We have succeeded in obtaining these verses, and think them worthy of insertion:

TO WILLIAM COWPER, ESQ.

ON READING HIS SONNET OF THE SIXTEENTH INSTANT ADDRESSED TO MR. WILBERFORCE.

Desert the cause of liberty!--the cause Of human nature!--sacred flame that burn'd So late, so bright within thee!--thence descend The monster Slavery's unnatural friend! 'Twere vile aspersion! justly, while it draws Thy virtuous indignation, greatly spurn'd.

As soon the foes of Afric might expect The altar's blaze, forgetful of the law Of its aspiring nature, should direct To hell its point inverted; as to draw Virtue like thine, and genius, grovelling base, To sanction wrong, and dignify disgrace.

Welcome _detection!_ grateful to the _Cause_, As to its Patron, Cowper's just applause!

S. M'CLELLAN. _April 25, 1792._

My correspondence with Hayley proceeds briskly, and is very affectionate on both sides. I expect him here in about a fortnight, and wish heartily, with Mrs. Unwin, that you would give him a meeting. I have promised him, indeed, that he shall find us alone, but you are one of the family.

I wish much to print the following lines in one of the daily papers. Lord S.'s vindication of the poor culprit[650] in the affair of Cheit Sing, has confirmed me in the belief that he has been injuriously treated, and I think it an act merely of justice to take a little notice of him.

[650] Warren Hastings, at that time under impeachment, as Governor-general of India.

TO WARREN HASTINGS, ESQ.

BY AN OLD SCHOOL-FELLOW OF HIS AT WESTMINSTER.

Hastings! I knew thee young, and of a mind While young, humane, conversable, and kind; Nor can I well believe thee, gentle THEN, Now grown a villain, and the WORST of men: But rather some suspect, who have oppress'd And worried thee, as not themselves the BEST.

If thou wilt take the pains to send them to thy news-monger, I hope thou wilt do well.

Adieu! W. C.

TO JOHN JOHNSON, ESQ.

Weston, May 20, 1792.

My dearest of all Johnnies,--I am not sorry that your ordination is postponed. A year's learning and wisdom, added to your present stock, will not be more than enough to satisfy the demands of your function. Neither am I sorry that you find it difficult to fix your thoughts to the serious point at all times. It proves, at least, that you attempt, and wish to do it, and these are good symptoms. Woe to those who enter on the ministry of the gospel without having previously asked, at least from God, a mind and spirit suited to their occupation, and whose experience never differs from itself, because they are always alike vain, light, and inconsiderate. It is, therefore, matter of great joy to me to hear you complain of levity, and such it is to Mrs. Unwin. She is, I thank God, tolerably well, and loves you. As to the time of your journey hither, the sooner after June the better; till then we shall have company.

I forget not my debts to your dear sister, and your aunt Balls. Greet them both with a brother's kiss, and place it to my account. I will write to them when Milton, and a thousand other engagements will give me leave. Mr. Hayley is here on a visit. We have formed a friendship that I trust will last for life, and render us an edifying example to all future poets.

Adieu! Lose no time in coming after the time mentioned.

W. C.

* * * * *

The reader is informed, by the close of the last letter, that Hayley was at this time the guest of Cowper. The meeting, so singularly produced, was a source of reciprocal delight; and each looked cheerfully forward to the unclouded enjoyment of many social and literary hours.

Hayley's account of this visit is too interesting, not to be recorded in his own words.

"My host, though now in his sixty-first year, appeared as happily exempt from all the infirmities of advanced life, as friendship could wish him to be; and his more elderly companion, not materially oppressed by age, discovered a benevolent alertness of character that seemed to promise a continuance of their domestic comfort. Their reception of me was kindness itself:--I was enchanted to find that the manners and conversation of Cowper resembled his poetry, charming by unaffected elegance, and the graces of a benevolent spirit. I looked with affectionate veneration and pleasure on the lady, who, having devoted her life and fortune to the service of this tender and sublime genius, in watching over him with maternal vigilance through many years of the darkest calamity, appeared to be now enjoying a reward justly due to the noblest exertions of friendship, in contemplating the health and the renown of the poet, whom she had the happiness to preserve.

"It seemed hardly possible to survey human nature in a more touching and a more satisfactory point of view. Their tender attention to each other, their simple, devout gratitude for the mercies which they had experienced together, and their constant, but unaffected propensity to impress on the mind and heart of a new friend, the deep sense which they incessantly felt, of their mutual obligations to each other, afforded me a very singular gratification; which my reader will conceive the more forcibly, when he has perused the following exquisite sonnet, addressed by Cowper to Mrs. Unwin.

"SONNET.

"Mary! I want a lyre with other strings; Such aid from Heaven, as some have feign'd they drew! An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new, And undebas'd by praise of meaner things! That ere through age or woe I shed my wings I may record thy worth, with honour due, In verse as musical as thou art true,-- Verse that immortalizes whom it sings! But thou hast little need: There is a book, By seraphs writ, with beams of heavenly light, On which the eyes of God not rarely look; A chronicle of actions, just and bright!

There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary, shine, And since thou own'st that praise, I spare thee mine.

"The delight that I derived from a perfect view of the virtues, the talents, and the present domestic enjoyments of Cowper, was suddenly overcast by the darkest and most painful anxiety.

"After passing our mornings in social study, we usually walked out together at noon. In returning from one of our rambles around the pleasant village of Weston, we were met by Mr. Greatheed, an accomplished minister of the gospel, who resides at Newport-Pagnel, and whom Cowper described to me in terms of cordial esteem.

"He came forth to meet us as we drew near the house, and it was soon visible, from his countenance and manner, that he had ill news to impart. After the most tender preparation that humanity could devise, he acquainted Cowper that Mrs. Unwin was under the immediate pressure of a paralytic attack.

"My agitated friend rushed to the sight of the sufferer;--he returned to me in a state that alarmed me in the highest degree for his faculties;--his first speech to me was wild in the extreme;--my answer would appear little less so; but it was addressed to the predominant fancy of my unhappy friend, and, with the blessing of Heaven, it produced an instantaneous calm in his troubled mind.

"From that moment he rested on my friendship, with such mild and cheerful confidence, that his affectionate spirit regarded me as sent providentially to support him in a season of the severest affliction."

The kindness of Hayley, at this critical moment, reflects the highest credit on his humanity and presence of mind. By means of an electrical machine, which the village of Weston fortunately supplied, he succeeded in relieving his suffering patient with the happiest effect. With this seasonable aid, seconded by a course of medicine recommended by Dr. Austen, an eminent London physician, and a friend of Hayley's, the violence of the attack was gradually mitigated, and the agitated mind of Cowper greatly relieved.

The progress of her recovery, and its influence on the tender spirit of Cowper, will sufficiently appear in the following letters.

TO LADY HESKETH.

Weston, May 24, 1792.

I wish with all my heart, my dearest Coz, that I had not ill news for the subject of the present letter. My friend, my Mary, has again been attacked by the same disorder that threatened me last year with the loss of her, and of which you were yourself a witness. Gregson would not allow that first stroke to be paralytic, but this he acknowledges to be so; and with respect to the former, I never had myself any doubt that it was, but this has been much the severest. Her speech has been almost unintelligible from the moment that she was struck; it is with difficulty that she opens her eyes, and she cannot keep them open; the muscles necessary to the purpose being contracted; and as to self-moving powers, from place to place, and the use of her right hand and arm, she has entirely lost them.

It has happened well, that of all men living, the man most qualified to assist and comfort me is here; though till within these few days I never saw him, and a few weeks since had no expectation that I ever should. You have already guessed that I mean Hayley--Hayley, who loves me as if he had known me from my cradle. When he returns to town, as he must, alas! too soon, he will pay his respects to you.

I will not conclude without adding, that our poor patient is beginning, I hope, to recover from this stroke also; but her amendment is slow, as must be expected at her time of life and in such a disorder. I am as well myself as you have ever known me in a time of much trouble, and even better.

It was not possible to prevail on Mrs. Unwin to let me send for Dr. Kerr, but Hayley has written to his friend, Dr. Austen, a representation of her case, and we expect his opinion and advice to-morrow. In the meantime, we have borrowed an electrical machine from our neighbour Socket, the effect of which she tried yesterday and the day before, and we think it has been of material service.

She was seized while Hayley and I were walking, and Mr. Greatheed, who called while we were absent, was with her.

I forgot in my last to thank thee for the proposed amendments of thy friend. Whoever he is, make my compliments to him, and thank him. The passages to which he objects have been all altered, and when he shall see them new dressed, I hope he will like them better.[651]

W. C.

[651] This friend was Mrs. Carter.

TO LADY HESKETH.

The Lodge, May 26, 1792.

My dearest Cousin,--Knowing that you will be anxious to learn how we go on, I write a few lines to inform you that Mrs. Unwin daily recovers a little strength and a little power of utterance; but she seems strongest, and her speech is more distinct, in a morning. Hayley has been all in all to us on this very afflictive occasion. Love him, I charge you, dearly, for my sake. Where could I have found a man, except himself, who could have made himself so necessary to me in so short a time, that I absolutely know not how to live without him?

Adieu, my dear sweet coz. Mrs. Unwin, as plainly as her poor lips can speak, sends her best love, and Hayley threatens in a few days to lay close siege to your affections in person.

W. C.

There is some hope, I find, that the chancellor may continue in office, and I shall be glad if he does, because we have no single man worthy to succeed him.

I open my letter again to thank you, my dearest coz, for yours just received. Though happy, as you well know, to see _you_ at all times, we have no need, and I trust shall have none, to trouble you with a journey made on purpose; yet once again, I am willing and desirous to believe, we shall be a happy trio at Weston; but unless necessity dictates a journey of charity, I wish all yours hither to be made for pleasure. Farewell! thou shalt know how we go on.

The tender and grateful mind of Cowper, sensible of the kind and able services of Dr. Austen, led him to pour out the effusions of his heart in the following verses

TO DR. AUSTEN,

OF CECIL STREET, LONDON.

Austen! accept a grateful verse from me! The poet's treasure! no inglorious fee! Loved by the Muses, thy ingenuous mind Pleasing requital in a verse may find; Verse oft has dash'd the scythe of Time aside, Immortalizing names, which else had died: And, oh! could I command the glittering wealth With which sick kings are glad to purchase health: Yet, if extensive fame, and sure to live, Were in the power of verse like mine to give,-- I would not recompense his art with less, Who, giving Mary health, heals my distress.

Friend of my friend! I love thee, though unknown, And boldly call thee, being his, my own.

TO MRS. BODHAM.

Weston, June 4, 1792.

My dearest Rose,--I am not such an ungrateful and insensible animal, as to have neglected you thus long without a reason....

I cannot say that I am sorry that our dear Johnny finds the pulpit-door shut against him at present.[652] He is young, and can afford to wait another year; neither is it to be regretted that his time of preparation for an office of so much importance as that of a minister of God's word should have been a little protracted. It is easier to direct the movements of a great army than to guide a few souls to heaven; the way is narrow and full of snares, and the guide himself has the most difficulties to encounter. But I trust he will do well. He is single in his views, honest-hearted, and desirous, by prayer and study of the scripture, to qualify himself for the service of his great Master, who will suffer no such man to fail for want of his aid and protection.

W. C.

[652] Some unexpected difficulties had occurred in obtaining a curacy, with a title for orders.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, June 4, 1792. ALL'S WELL.

Which words I place as conspicuously as possible, and prefix them to my letter, to save you the pain, my friend and brother, of a moment's anxious speculation. Poor Mary proceeds in her amendment still, and improves, I think, even at a swifter rate than when you left her. The stronger she grows the faster she gathers strength, which is perhaps the natural course of recovery. She walked so well this morning, that she told me at my first visit she had entirely forgot her illness, and she spoke so distinctly, and had so much of her usual countenance, that had it been possible she would have made me forget it too.

Returned from my walk, blown to tatters--found two dear things in the study, your letter and my Mary! She is bravely well, and your beloved epistle does us both good. I found your kind pencil-note in my song-book, as soon as I came down on the morning of your departure, and Mary was vexed to the heart that the simpletons who watched her supposed her asleep when she was not, for she learned, soon after you were gone, that you would have peeped at her, had you known her to have been awake: I perhaps might have had a peep too, and was as vexed as she: but if it please God, we shall make ourselves large amends for all lost peeps by-and-by at Eartham.

W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, June 5, 1792.

Yesterday was a noble day with us--speech almost perfect--eyes open almost the whole day, without any effort to keep them so; and the step wonderfully improved. But the night has been almost a sleepless one, owing partly I believe to her having had as much sleep again as usual the night before; for even when she is in tolerable health she hardly ever sleeps well two nights together. I found her accordingly a little out of spirits this morning, but still insisting on it that she is better. Indeed she always tells me so, and will probably die with those very words upon her lips. They will be true then at least, for then she will be best of all. She is now (the clock has just struck eleven) endeavouring, I believe, to get a little sleep, for which reason I do not yet let her know that I have received your letter.

Can I ever honour you enough for your zeal to serve me? Truly I think not: I am however so sensible of the love I owe you on this account, that I every day regret the acuteness of your feelings for me, convinced that they expose you to much trouble, mortification, and disappointment. I have in short a poor opinion of my destiny, as I told you when you were here, and, though I believe that if any man living can do me good you will, I cannot yet persuade myself, that even you will be successful in attempting it. But it is no matter; you are yourself a good, which I can never value enough, and, whether rich or poor in other respects, I shall always account myself better provided for than I deserve, with such a friend at my back as you. Let it please God to continue to me my William and Mary, and I will be more reasonable than to grumble.

I rose this morning wrapt round with a cloud of melancholy, and with a heart full of fears, but if I see Mary's amendment a little advanced when she rises, I shall be better.

I have just been with her again. Except that she is fatigued for want of sleep, she seems as well as yesterday. The post brings me a letter from Hurdis, who is broken-hearted for a dying sister. Had we eyes sharp enough, we should see the arrows of death flying in all directions, and account it a wonder that we and our friends escape them but a single day.

W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, June 7, 1792.

Of what materials can you suppose me made, if after all the rapid proofs that you have given me of your friendship, I do not love you with all my heart, and regret your absence continually? But you must permit me to be melancholy now and then; or if you will not, I must be so without your permission; for that sable thread is so intermixed with the very thread of my existence as to be inseparable from it, at least while I exist in the body. Be content, therefore; let me sigh and groan, but always be sure that I love you! You will be well assured that I should not have indulged myself in this rhapsody about myself and my melancholy, had my present mood been of that complexion, or had not our poor Mary seemed still to advance in her recovery. So in fact she does, and has performed several little feats to-day; such as either she could not perform at all, or very feebly, while you were with us.

I shall be glad if you have seen Johnny as I call him, my Norfolk cousin; he is a sweet lad, but as shy as a bird. It costs him always two or three days to open his mouth before a stranger; but when he does, he is sure to please by the innocent cheerfulness of his conversation. His sister too is one of my idols, for the resemblance she bears to my mother.

Mary and you have all my thoughts; and how should it be otherwise? She looks well, is better, and loves you dearly.

Adieu! My dear brother, W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, June 10, 1792.

I do indeed anxiously wish that every thing you do may prosper; and should I at last prosper by your means, shall taste double sweetness in prosperity for that reason.

I rose this morning, as I usually do, with a mind all in sables. In this mood I presented myself to Mary's bedside, whom I found, though after many hours lying awake, yet cheerful, and not to be affected with my desponding humour. It is a great blessing to us both, that, poor feeble thing as she is, she has a most invincible courage, and a trust in God's goodness, that nothing shakes. She is now in the study, and is certainly in some degree better than she was yesterday, but how to measure that little I know not, except by saying that it is just perceptible.

I am glad that you have seen my Johnny of Norfolk, because I know it will be a comfort to you to have seen your successor. He arrived to my great joy, yesterday; and, not having bound himself to any particular time of going, will, I hope, stay long with us. You are now once more snug in your retreat, and I give you joy of your return to it, after the bustle in which you have lived since you left Weston. Weston mourns your absence, and will mourn it till she sees you again. What is to become of Milton I know not; I do nothing but scribble to you, and seem to have no relish for any other employment. I have, however, in pursuit of your idea to compliment Darwin, put a few stanzas together, which I shall subjoin; you will easily give them all that you find they want, and match the song with another.

I am now going to walk with Johnny, much cheered since I began writing to you, and by Mary's looks and good spirits.

W. C.

TO DR. DARWIN,

AUTHOR OF THE BOTANIC GARDEN.

Two poets (poets by report Not oft so well agree) Sweet harmonist of Flora's court! Conspire to honour thee.

They best can judge a poet's worth, Who oft themselves have known The pangs of a poetic birth, By labours of their own.

We, therefore, pleas'd, extol thy song, Though various, yet complete, Rich in embellishment as strong, And learn'd as it is sweet.

No envy mingles with our praise; Though, could our hearts repine, At any poet's happier lays, They would, they must, at thine.

But we, in mutual bondage knit Of friendship's closest tie, Can gaze on even Darwin's wit With an unjaundic'd eye:

And deem the bard, whoe'er he be, And howsoever known, Who would not twine a wreath for thee, Unworthy of his own.[653]

[653] The celebrated poem of "the Botanic Garden," originated in a copy of verses, addressed by Miss Seward to Dr. Darwin, complimenting him on his sequestered retreat near Lichfield. In this retreat there was a mossy fountain of the purest water; aquatic plants bordered its summit, and branched from the fissures of the rock. There was also a brook, which he widened into small lakes. The whole scene formed a little paradise, and was embellished with various classes of plants, uniting the Linnean science, with all the charm of landscape.

When Miss Seward presented her verses to Dr. Darwin, he was highly gratified, she observes, and said, "I shall send this poem to the periodical publications; but it ought to form the exordium of a great work. The Linnean system is unexplored poetic ground, and a happy subject for the muse. It affords fine scope for poetic landscape; it suggests metamorphoses of the Ovidian kind, though reversed. Ovid made men and women into flowers, plants, and trees. You should make flowers, plants, and trees, into men and women. I," continued he, "will write the notes, which must be scientific, and you shall write the verse."

Miss S. remarked, that besides her want of botanic knowledge, the undertaking was not strictly proper for a female pen; and that she felt how much more it was adapted to the ingenuity and vigour of his own fancy. After many objections urged on the part of Dr. Darwin, he at length acquiesced, and ultimately produced his "Loves of the Plants, or Botanic Garden."*

Though this poem obtained much celebrity on its first appearance, it was nevertheless severely animadverted upon by some critics. A writer in the Anti-Jacobin Review, (known to be the late Mr. Canning) parodied the work, by producing "The Loves of the Triangles," in which triangles were made to fall in love with the same fervour of passion, as Dr. Darwin attributed to plants. The style, the imagery, and the entire composition of "The Loves of the Plants," were most successfully imitated. We quote the following.

*See Life of Dr. Darwin, by Miss Seward.

"In filmy, gauzy, gossamery lines, With lucid language, and most dark designs, In sweet tetrandryan monogynian strains, Pant for a pistil in botanic pains; Raise lust in pinks, and with unhallowed fire, Bid the soft virgin violet expire."

We do not think that the Botanic Garden ever fully maintained its former estimation, after the keen Attic wit of Mr. Canning, though the concluding lines of Cowper seem to promise perpetuity to its fame.

TO LADY HESKETH.

Weston, June 11, 1792.

My dearest Coz,--Thou art ever in my thoughts, whether I am writing to thee or not, and my correspondence seems to grow upon me at such a rate that I am not able to address thee so often as I would. In fact, I live only to write letters, Hayley is as you see added to the number, and to him I write almost as duly as I rise in the morning; nor is he only added, but his friend Carwardine also--Carwardine the generous, the disinterested, the friendly. I seem, in short, to have stumbled suddenly on a race of heroes, men who resolve to have no interests of their own till mine are served.

But I will proceed to other matters, and that concern me more intimately, and more immediately, than all that can be done for me either by the great or the small, or by both united. Since I wrote last, Mrs. Unwin has been continually improving in strength, but at so gradual a rate that I can only mark it by saying that she moves about every day with less support than the former. Her recovery is most of all retarded by want of sleep. On the whole, I believe she goes on as well as could be expected, though not quite well enough to satisfy me. And Dr. Austen, speaking from the reports I have made of her, says he has no doubt of her restoration.

During the last two months I seem to myself to have been in a dream. It has been a most eventful period, and fruitful to an uncommon degree, both in good and evil. I have been very ill, and suffered excruciating pain. I recovered, and became quite well again. I received within my doors a man, but lately an entire stranger, and who now loves me as a brother, and forgets himself to serve me. Mrs. Unwin has been seized with an illness that for many days threatened to deprive me of her, and to cast a gloom, an impenetrable one, on all my future prospects. She is now granted to me again. A few days since I should have thought the moon might have descended into my purse as likely as any emolument, and now it seems not impossible. All this has come to pass with such rapidity as events move with in romance indeed, but not often in real life. Events of all sorts creep or fly exactly as God pleases.

To the foregoing I have to add in conclusion, the arrival of my Johnny, just when I wanted him most, and when only a few days before I had no expectation of him. He came to dinner on Saturday, and I hope I shall keep him long. What comes next I know not, but shall endeavour, as you exhort me, to look for good, and I know I shall have your prayer that I may not be disappointed.

Hayley tells me you begin to be jealous of him, lest I should love him more than I love you, and bids me say, "that, should I do so, you in revenge must love him more than I do." Him I know you will love, and me, because you have such a habit of doing it that you cannot help it.

Adieu! My knuckles ache with letter-writing. With my poor patient's affectionate remembrances, and Johnny's,

I am ever thine, W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, June 19, 1792.

... Thus have I filled a whole page to my dear William of Eartham, and have not said a syllable yet about my Mary. A sure sign that she goes on well. Be it known to you that we have these four days discarded our sedan with two elbows. Here is no more carrying, or being carried, but she walks up stairs boldly, with one hand upon the balustrade, and the other under my arm, and in like manner she comes down in a morning. Still I confess she is feeble, and misses much of her former strength. The weather too is sadly against her: it deprives her of many a good turn in the orchard, and fifty times have I wished this very day, that Dr. Darwin's scheme of giving rudders and sails[654] to the ice islands that spoil all our summers, were actually put into practice. So should we have gentle airs instead of churlish blasts, and those everlasting sources of bad weather being once navigated into the southern hemisphere, my Mary would recover as fast again. We are both of your mind respecting the journey to Eartham, and think that July, if by that time she have strength for the journey, will be better than August. We shall have more long days before us, and them we shall want as much for our return as for our going forth. This, however, must be left to the Giver of all good. If our visit to you be according to his will, he will smooth our way before us, and appoint the time of it; and I thus speak, not because I wish to seem a saint in your eyes, but because my poor Mary actually is one, and would not set her foot over the threshold, unless she had, or thought she had, God's free permission. With that she would go through floods and fire, though without it she would be afraid of everything--afraid even to visit you, dearly as she loves, and much as she longs to see you.

W. C.

[654] That a very perceptible change, generally speaking, has taken place in the climate of Great Britain, and that the same observation applies to other countries, has been a frequent subject of remark, both with the past and present generation. Various causes have been assigned for this peculiarity. It has been said that nature is growing old, and losing its elasticity and vigour. Others have attributed the change to the vast accumulation of ice in the Polar regions, and its consequent influence on the temperature of the air. Dr. Darwin humorously suggested the scheme of giving rudders and sails to the Ice Islands, that they might be wafted by northern gales, and thus be absorbed by the heat of a southern latitude. It is worthy of remark that in Milton's Latin Poems, there is a college thesis on this subject, viz. whether nature was becoming old and infirm. Milton took the negative of this proposition, and maintained, _naturam non pati senium_, that nature was not growing old. Cowper in his translation of this poem, thus renders some of the passages.

How?--Shall the face of nature then be plough'd Into deep wrinkles, and shall years at last On the great Parent fix a sterile curse? Shall even she confess old age, and halt, And, palsy-smitten, shake her starry brows?-- Shall Time's unsated maw crave and ingulph The very heav'ns, that regulate his flight?-- No. The Almighty Father surer laid His deep foundations, and providing well For the event of all, the scales of Fate Suspended, in just equipoise, and bade His universal works, from age to age, One tenour hold, perpetual, undisturb'd.-- Not tardier now is Saturn than of old, Nor radiant less the burning casque of Mars. Phoebus, his vigour unimpair'd, still shows Th' effulgence of his youth, nor needs the god A downward course, that he may warm the vales; But, ever rich in influence, runs his road, Sign after sign, through all the heavenly zone. Beautiful as at first, ascends the star From odorif'rous Ind, whose office is To gather home betimes th' ethereal flock, To pour them o'er the skies again at eve, And to discriminate the night and day. Still Cynthia's changeful horn waxes and wanes Alternate, and with arms extended still, She welcomes to her breast her brother's beams. Nor have the elements deserted yet Their functions.-- Thus, in unbroken series, all proceeds; And shall, till, wide involving either pole And the immensity of yonder heav'n, The final flames of destiny absorb The world, consum'd in one enormous pyre!

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, June 27, 1792.

Well then--let us talk about this journey to Eartham. You wish me to settle the time of it, and I wish with all my heart to be able to do so, living in hopes meanwhile that I shall be able to do it soon. But some little time must necessarily intervene. Our Mary must be able to walk alone, to cut her own food, feed herself, and to wear her own shoes, for at present she wears mine. All things considered, my friend and brother, you will see the expediency of waiting a little before we set off to Eartham. We mean indeed before that day arrives to make a trial of the strength of her head, how far it may be able to bear the motion of a carriage--a motion that it has not felt these seven years. I grieve that we are thus circumstanced, and that we cannot gratify ourselves in a delightful and innocent project without all these precautions; but when we have leaf-gold to handle we must do it tenderly.

I thank you, my brother, both for presenting my authorship[655] to your friend Guy, and for the excellent verses with which you have inscribed your present. There are none neater or better turned--with what shall I requite you? I have nothing to send you but a gimcrack, which I have prepared for my bride and bridegroom neighbours, who are expected to-morrow! You saw in my book a poem entitled Catharina, which concluded with a wish that we had her for a neighbour:[656] this therefore is called

C A T H A R I N A:

(_The Second Part._)

ON HER MARRIAGE TO GEORGE COURTENAY, ESQ.

Believe it or not, as you choose, The doctrine is certainly true, That the future is known to the muse, And poets are oracles too.

I did but express a desire To see Catharina at home, At the side of my friend George's fire, And lo! she is actually come.

And such prophecy some may despise, But the wish of a poet and friend Perhaps is approv'd in the skies, And therefore attains to its end.

'Twas a wish that flew ardently forth, From a bosom effectually warm'd With the talents, the graces, and worth, Of the person for whom it was form'd.

Maria would leave us, I knew, To the grief and regret of us all; But less to our grief could we view Catharina the queen of the Hall.

And therefore I wish'd as I did, And therefore this union of hands, Not a whisper was heard to forbid, But all cry amen to the bands.

Since therefore I seem to incur No danger of wishing in vain, When making good wishes for her, I will e'en to my wishes again.

With one I have made her a wife, And now I will try with another, Which I cannot suppress for my life, How soon I can make her a mother.

[655] Verses on Dr. Darwin.

[656] See p. 343.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, July 4, 1792.

I know not how you proceed in your life of Milton, but I suppose not very rapidly, for while you were here, and since you left us, you have had no other theme but me. As for myself, except my letters to you, and the nuptial song I inserted in my last, I have literally done nothing since I saw you. Nothing, I mean, in the writing way, though a great deal in another; that is to say, in attending my poor Mary, and endeavouring to nurse her up for a journey to Eartham. In this I have hitherto succeeded tolerably well, and had rather carry this point completely than be the most famous editor of Milton that the world has ever seen or shall see.

Your humorous descant upon my art of wishing made us merry, and consequently did good to us both. I sent my wish to the Hall yesterday. They are excellent neighbours, and so friendly to me that I wished to gratify them. When I went to pay my first visit, George flew into the court to meet me, and when I entered the parlour Catharina sprang into my arms.

W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, July 15, 1792.

The progress of the old nurse in Terence is very much like the progress of my poor patient in the road of recovery. I cannot, indeed, say that she moves but advances not, for advances are certainly made, but the progress of a week is hardly perceptible. I know not therefore, at present, what to say about this long-postponed journey. The utmost that it is safe for me to say at this moment is this--You know that you are dear to us both: true it is that you are so, and equally true that the very instant we feel ourselves at liberty, we will fly to Eartham. I have been but once within the Hall door since the Courtenays came home, much as I have been pressed to dine there, and have hardly escaped giving a little offence by declining it: but, though I should offend all the world by my obstinacy in this instance, I would not leave my poor Mary alone. Johnny serves me as a representative, and him I send without scruple. As to the affair of Milton, I know not what will become of it. I wrote to Johnson a week since to tell him that, the interruption of Mrs. Unwin's illness still continuing, and being likely to continue, I knew not when I should be able to proceed. The translations (I said) were finished, except the revisal of a part.

God bless your dear little boy and poet! I thank him for exercising his dawning genius upon me, and shall be still happier to thank him in person.

Abbot is painting me so true, That (trust me) you would stare And hardly know, at the first view, If I were here or there.[657]

[657] This portrait was taken at the instance of Dr. Johnson, and is thought most to resemble Cowper. It is now in the possession of Dr. Johnson's family, and represents the poet in a sitting posture, in an evening dress.

I have sat twice; and the few who have seen his copy of me are much struck with the resemblance. He is a sober, quiet man, which, considering that I must have him at least a week longer for an inmate, is a great comfort to me.

My Mary sends you her best love. She can walk now, leaning on my arm only, and her speech is certainly much improved. I long to see you. Why cannot you and dear Tom spend the remainder of the summer with us? We might then all set off for Eartham merrily together. But I retract this, conscious that I am unreasonable. It is a wretched world, and what we would is almost always what we cannot.

Adieu! Love me, and be sure of a return.

W. C.

TO THOMAS PARK, ESQ.

Weston Underwood, July 20, 1792.

Dear Sir,--I have been long silent, and must now be short. My time since I wrote last has been almost wholly occupied in suffering. Either indisposition of my own, or of the dearest friend I have,[658] has so entirely engaged my attention, that, except the revision of the two elegies you sent me long since, I have done nothing; nor do I at present foresee the day when I shall be able to do anything. Should Mrs. Unwin recover sufficiently to undertake a journey, I have promised Mr. Hayley to close the summer with a visit to him at Eartham. At the best, therefore, I cannot expect to proceed in my main business, till the approach of winter. I am thus thrown so much into arrear respecting Milton, that I already despair of being ready at the time appointed, and so I have told my employer.

[658] Mrs. Unwin.

I need not say that the drift of this melancholy preface is to apprize you that you must not expect despatch from me. Such expedition as I can use I will, but I believe you must be very patient.

It was only one year that I gave to drawing, for I found it an employment hurtful to my eyes, which have always been weak and subject to inflammation. I finished my attempt in this way with three small landscapes, which I presented to a lady. These may, perhaps, exist, but I have now no correspondence with the fair proprietor. Except these, there is nothing remaining to show that I ever aspired to such an accomplishment.

The hymns in the Olney collection marked (C,) are all of my composition, except one, which bears that initial by a mistake of the printer. Not having the book at hand, I cannot now say which it is.

Wishing you a pleasant time at Margate, and assuring you, that I shall receive, with great pleasure, any drawing of yours with which you may favour me, and give it a distinguished place in my very small collection,

I remain, dear sir, Much and sincerely yours, W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, July 22, 1792.

This important affair, my dear brother, is at last decided, and we are coming. Wednesday se'nnight, if nothing occur to make a later day necessary, is the day fixed for our journey. Our rate of travelling must depend on Mary's ability to bear it. Our mode of travelling will occupy three days unavoidably, for we shall come in a coach. Abbot finishes my picture to-morrow; on Wednesday he returns to town, and is commissioned to order one down for us, with four steeds to draw it;

"Hollow pamper'd jades of Asia, That cannot go but forty miles a day."

Send us our route, for I am as ignorant of it almost as if I were in a strange country. We shall reach St. Alban's, I suppose, the first day; say where we must finish our second day's journey, and at what inn we may best repose? As to the end of the third day, we know where that will find us, viz. in the arms, and under the roof, of our beloved Hayley.

General Cowper, having heard a rumour of this intended migration, desires to meet me on the road, that we may once more see each other. He lives at Ham, near Kingston. Shall we go through Kingston or near it? For I would give him as little trouble as possible, though he offers very kindly to come as far as Barnet for that purpose. Nor must I forget Carwardine, who so kindly desired to be informed what way we should go. On what point of the road will it be easiest for him to find us? On all these points you must be my oracle. My friend and brother, we shall overwhelm you with our numbers; this is all the trouble that I have left. My Johnny of Norfolk, happy in the thought of accompanying us, would be broken-hearted to be left behind.

In the midst of all these solicitudes, I laugh to think what they are made of, and what an important thing it is for me to travel. Other men steal away from their homes silently, and make no disturbance, but when I move, houses are turned upside down, maids are turned out of their beds, all the counties through which I pass appear to be in an uproar--Surrey greets me by the mouth of the General, and Essex by that of Carwardine. How strange does all this seem to a man who has seen no bustle, and made none, for twenty years together!

Adieu! W. C.

TO THE REV. WILLIAM BULL.[659]

[659] Private correspondence.

July 25, 1792.

My dear Mr. Bull,--Engaged as I have been ever since I saw you, it was not possible that I should write sooner; and, busy as I am at present, it is not without difficulty that I can write even now: but I promised you a letter, and must endeavour, at least to be as good as my word. How do you imagine I have been occupied these last ten days? In sitting, not on cockatrice' eggs, nor yet to gratify a mere idle humour, nor because I was too sick to move; but because my cousin Johnson has an aunt who has a longing desire of my picture, and because he would, therefore, bring a painter from London to draw it. For this purpose I have been sitting, as I say, these ten days; and am heartily glad that my sitting time is over. You have now, I know, a burning curiosity to learn two things, which I may choose whether I will tell you or not; First, who was the painter; and secondly, how he has succeeded. The painter's name is Abbot. You never heard of him, you say. It is very likely; but there is, nevertheless, such a painter, and an excellent one he is. _Multa sunt quæ bonus Bernardus nec vidit, nec audivit._ To your second inquiry I answer, that he has succeeded to admiration. The likeness is so strong, that when my friends enter the room where the picture is, they start, astonished to see me where they know I am not. Miserable man that you are, to be at Brighton instead of being here, to contemplate this prodigy of art, which, therefore, you can never see; for it goes to London next Monday, to be suspended awhile at Abbot's; and then proceeds into Norfolk, where it will be suspended for ever.

But the picture is not the only prodigy I have to tell you of. A greater belongs to me; and one that you will hardly credit, even on my own testimony. We are on the eve of a journey, and a long one. On this very day se'nnight we set out for Eartham, the seat of my brother bard, Mr. Hayley, on the other side of London, nobody knows where, a hundred and twenty miles off. Pray for us, my friend, that we may have a safe going and return. It is a tremendous exploit, and I feel a thousand anxieties when I think of it. But a promise, made to him when he was here, that we would go if we could, and a sort of persuasion that we can if we will, oblige us to it. The journey, and the change of air, together with the novelty to us of the scene to which we are going, may, I hope, be useful to us both; especially to Mrs. Unwin, who has most need of restoratives. She sends her love to you and to Thomas, in which she is sincerely joined by

Your affectionate W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, July 29, 1792.

Through floods and flames to your retreat I win my desp'rate way, And when we meet, if e'er we meet, Will echo your huzza.

You will wonder at the word _desp'rate_ in the second line, and at the _if_ in the third; but could you have any conception of the fears I have had to bustle with, of the dejection of spirits that I have suffered concerning this journey, you would wonder much more that I still courageously persevere in my resolution to undertake it. Fortunately for my intentions, it happens, that as the day approaches my terrors abate; for had they continued to be what they were a week since, I must, after all, have disappointed you; and was actually once on the verge of doing it. I have told you something of my nocturnal experiences, and assure you now, that they were hardly ever more terrific than on this occasion. Prayer has however opened my passage at last, and obtained for me a degree of confidence that I trust will prove a comfortable viaticum to me all the way. On Wednesday therefore we set forth.

The terrors that I have spoken of would appear ridiculous to most, but to you they will not, for you are a reasonable creature, and know well that, to whatever cause it be owing (whether to constitution, or to God's express appointment) I am hunted by spiritual hounds in the night season. I cannot help it. You will pity me, and wish it were otherwise; and, though you may think there is much of the imaginary in it, will not deem it for that reason an evil less to be lamented--so much for fears and distresses. Soon I hope they shall all have a joyful termination, and I, my Mary, my Johnny, and my dog, be skipping with delight at Eartham!

Well! this picture is at last finished, and well finished, I can assure you. Every creature that has seen it has been astonished at the resemblance. Sam's boy bowed to it, and Beau walked up to it, wagging his tail as he went, and evidently showing that he acknowledged its likeness to his master. It is a half-length, as it is technically but absurdly called; that is to say, it gives all but the foot and ankle. To-morrow it goes to town, and will hang some months at Abbot's, when it will be sent to its due destination in Norfolk.[660]

[660] To Mrs. Bodham's.

I hope, or rather wish, that at Eartham I may recover that habit of study which, inveterate as it once seemed, I now seem to have lost--lost to such a degree, that it is even painful to me to think of what it will cost me to acquire it again.

Adieu! my dear, dear Hayley; God give us a happy meeting. Mary sends her love--she is in pretty good plight this morning, having slept well, and for her part, has no fears at all about the journey.

Ever yours, W. C.

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.[661]

[661] Private correspondence.

July 30, 1792.

My dear Friend,--Like you, I am obliged to snatch short opportunities of corresponding with my friends; and to write what I can, not what I would. Your kindness in giving me the first letter after your return claims my thanks; and my tardiness to answer it would demand an apology, if, having been here, and witnessed how much my time is occupied in attendance on my poor patient, you could possibly want one. She proceeds, I trust, in her recovery; but at so slow a rate, that the difference made in a week is hardly perceptible to me, who am always with her. This last night has been the worst she has known since her illness--entirely sleepless till seven in the morning. Such ill rest seems but an indifferent preparation for a long journey, which we purpose to undertake on Wednesday, when we set out for Eartham, on a visit to Mr. Hayley. The journey itself will, I hope, be useful to her; and the air of the sea, blowing over the South Downs, together with the novelty of the scene to us, will, I hope, be serviceable to us both. You may imagine that we, who have been resident on one spot so many years, do not engage in such an enterprise without some anxiety. Persons accustomed to travel would make themselves merry with mine; it seems so disproportioned to the occasion. Once I have been on the point of determining not to go, and even since we fixed the day; my troubles have been so insupportable. But it has been made a matter of much prayer, and at last it has pleased God to satisfy me, in some measure, that his will corresponds with our purpose, and that He will afford us his protection. You, I know, will not be unmindful of us during our absence from home; but will obtain for us, if your prayers can do it, all that we would ask for ourselves--the presence and favour of God, a salutary effect of our journey, and a safe return.

I rejoiced, and had reason to do so, in your coming to Weston, for I think the Lord came with you. Not, indeed, to abide with me; not to restore me to that intercourse with Him which I enjoyed twenty years ago; but to awaken in me, however, more spiritual feeling than I have experienced, except in two instances, during all that time. The comforts that I had received under your ministry, in better days, all rushed upon my recollection; and, during two or three transient moments, seemed to be in a degree renewed. You will tell me that, transient as they were, they were yet evidences of a love that is not so; and I am desirous to believe it.

With Mrs. Unwin's warm remembrances, and my cousin Johnson's best compliments, I am

Sincerely yours, W. C.

P.S.--If I hear from you while I am abroad, your letter will find me at William Hayley's, Esq. Eartham, near Chichester. We propose to return in about a month.

* * * * *

Cowper records the particulars of this visit in the following letters.

TO THE REV. MR. GREATHEED.

Eartham, Aug. 6, 1792.

My dear Sir,--Having first thanked you for your affectionate and acceptable letter, I will proceed, as well as I can, to answer your equally affectionate request, that I would send you early news of our arrival at Eartham. Here we are in the most elegant mansion that I have ever inhabited, and surrounded by the most delightful pleasure-grounds that I have ever seen; but which, dissipated as my powers of thought are at present, I will not undertake to describe. It shall suffice me to say, that they occupy three sides of a hill, which in Buckinghamshire might well pass for a mountain, and from the summit of which is beheld a most magnificent landscape bounded by the sea, and in one part by the Isle of Wight, which may also be seen plainly from the window of the library, in which I am writing.

It pleased God to carry us both through the journey with far less difficulty and inconvenience than I expected. I began it indeed with a thousand fears, and when we arrived the first evening at Barnet, found myself oppressed in spirit to a degree that could hardly be exceeded. I saw Mrs. Unwin weary, as she might well be, and heard such noises, both within the house and without, that I concluded she would get no rest. But I was mercifully disappointed. She rested, though not well, yet sufficiently; and when we finished our next day's journey at Ripley, we were both in better condition, both of body and mind, than on the day preceding. At Ripley we found a quiet inn, that housed, as it happened, that night, no company but ourselves. There we slept well, and rose perfectly refreshed; and, except some terrors that I felt at passing over the Sussex hills by moonlight, met with little to complain of, till we arrived about ten o'clock at Eartham. Here we are as happy as it is in the power of terrestrial good to make us. It is almost a paradise in which we dwell; and our reception has been the kindest that it was possible for friendship and hospitality to contrive. Our host mentions you with great respect, and bids me tell you that he esteems you highly. Mrs. Unwin, who is, I think, in some points, already the better for her excursion, unites with mine her best compliments both to yourself and Mrs. Greatheed. I have much to see and enjoy before I can be perfectly apprized of all the delights of Eartham, and will therefore now subscribe myself

Yours, my dear sir, With great sincerity, W. C.

TO MRS. COURTENAY.

Eartham, August 12, 1792.

My dearest Catharina,--Though I have travelled far, nothing did I see in my travels that surprised me half so agreeably as your kind letter; for high as my opinion of your good-nature is, I had no hopes of hearing from you till I should have written first; a pleasure which I intended to allow myself the first opportunity.

After three days' confinement in a coach, and suffering as we went all that could be suffered from excessive heat and dust, we found ourselves late in the evening at the door of our friend Hayley. In every other respect the journey was extremely pleasant. At the Mitre, in Barnet, where we lodged the first evening, we found our friend Rose, who had walked thither from his house in Chancery-lane to meet us; and at Kingston, where we dined the second day, I found my old and much-valued friend, General Cowper, whom I had not seen in thirty years, and but for this journey should never have seen again. Mrs. Unwin, on whose account I had a thousand fears, before we set out, suffered as little from fatigue as myself, and begins, I hope, already to feel some beneficial effects from the air of Eartham, and the exercise that she takes in one of the most delightful pleasure-grounds in the world. They occupy three sides of a hill, lofty enough to command a view of the sea, which skirts the horizon to a length of many miles, with the Isle of Wight at the end of it. The inland scene is equally beautiful, consisting of a large and deep valley well cultivated, and enclosed by magnificent hills, all crowned with wood. I had, for my part, no conception that a poet could be the owner of such a paradise; and his house is as elegant as his scenes are charming.[662]

[662] This residence afterwards became the property of the late William Huskisson, Esq.

But think not, my dear Catharina, that amidst all these beauties I shall lose the remembrance of the peaceful, but less splendid, Weston. Your precincts will be as dear to me as ever, when I return; though when that day will arrive I know not, our host being determined, as I plainly see, to keep us as long as possible. Give my best love to your husband. Thank him most kindly for his attention to the old bard of Greece, and pardon me that I do not now send you an epitaph for Fop. I am not sufficiently recollected to compose even a bagatelle at present; but in due time you shall receive it.

Hayley, who will some time or other I hope see you at Weston, is already prepared to love you both, and, being passionately fond of music, longs much to hear you.

Adieu. W. C.

TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ.

Eartham, Aug. 14, 1792.

My dear Friend,--Romney is here: it would add much to my happiness if you were of the party; I have prepared Hayley to think highly, that is justly, of you, and the time, I hope, will come when you will supersede all need of my recommendation.

Mrs. Unwin gathers strength. I have indeed great hopes, from the air and exercise which this fine season affords her opportunity to use, that ere we return she will be herself again.

W. C.

TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ.

Eartham, Aug. 18, 1792.

Wishes in this world are generally vain, and in the next we shall make none. Every day I wish you were of the party, knowing how happy you would be in a place where we have nothing to do but enjoy beautiful scenery and converse agreeably.

Mrs. Unwin's health continues to improve; and even I, who was well when I came, find myself still better.

Yours, W. C.

TO MRS. COURTENAY.

Eartham, Aug. 25, 1792.

Without waiting for an answer to my last, I send my dear Catharina the epitaph she desired, composed as well as I could compose it in a place where every object, being still new to me, distracts my attention, and makes me as awkward at verse as if I had never dealt in it. Here it is.

EPITAPH ON FOP;

A DOG, BELONGING TO LADY THROCKMORTON.

Though once a puppy, and though Fop by name, Here moulders one, whose bones some honour claim; No sycophant, although of spaniel race! And though no hound, a martyr to the chace! Ye squirrels, rabbits, leverets rejoice! Your haunts no longer echo to his voice. This record of his fate exulting view, He died worn out with vain pursuit of you!

"Yes!" the indignant shade of Fop replies, "And worn with vain pursuit, man also dies!"

I am here, as I told you in my last, delightfully situated, and in the enjoyment of all that the most friendly hospitality can impart; yet do I neither forget Weston, nor my friends at Weston: on the contrary, I have at length, though much and kindly pressed to make a longer stay, determined on the day of our departure--on the seventeenth of September we shall leave Eartham; four days will be necessary to bring us home again, for I am under a promise to General Cowper to dine with him on the way, which cannot be done comfortably, either to him or to ourselves, unless we sleep that night at Kingston.

The air of this place has been, I believe, beneficial to us both. I indeed was in tolerable health before I set out, but have acquired since I came, both a better appetite and a knack of sleeping almost as much in a single night as formerly in two. Whether double quantities of that article will be favourable to me as a poet, time must show. About myself, however, I care little, being made of materials so tough, as not to threaten me even now, at the end of so many _lustrums_, with any thing like a speedy dissolution. My chief concern has been about Mrs. Unwin, and my chief comfort at this moment is, that she likewise has received, I hope, considerable benefit by the journey.

Tell my dear George that I begin to long to behold him again, and, did it not savour of ingratitude to the friend under whose roof I am so happy at present, should be impatient to find myself once more under yours.

Adieu! my dear Catharina. I have nothing to add in the way of news, except that Romney has drawn me in crayons, by the suffrage of all here, extremely like.

W. C.

TO THE REV. MR. HURDIS.[663]

[663] This amiable and much esteemed character, and endeared as one of the friends of Cowper, was born at Bishopstone in Sussex, in 1763. He was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1793, and died at a premature age, in 1801. His claims as an author principally rest on his once popular poem of the "Village Curate." He also wrote "A Vindication of the University of Oxford from the Aspersions of Mr. Gibbon." His works are published in 3 vols.

Eartham, Aug. 26, 1792.

My dear Sir,--Your kind but very affecting letter found me not at Weston, to which place it was directed, but in a bower of my friend Hayley's garden at Eartham, where I was sitting with Mrs. Unwin. We both knew the moment we saw it from whom it came, and, observing a red seal, both comforted ourselves that all was well at Burwash: but we soon felt that we were not called to rejoice, but to mourn with you;[664] we do indeed sincerely mourn with you, and, if it will afford you any consolation to know it, you may be assured that every eye here has testified what our hearts have suffered for you. Your loss is great, and your disposition I perceive such as exposes you to feel the whole weight of it: I will not add to your sorrow by a vain attempt to assuage it; your own good sense, and the piety of your principles, will, of course, suggest to you the most powerful motives of acquiescence in the will of God. You will be sure to recollect that the stroke, severe as it is, is not the stroke of an enemy, but of a father; and will find I trust, hereafter, that like a father he has done you good by it. Thousands have been able to say, and myself as loud as any of them, it has been good for me that I was afflicted; but time is necessary to work us to this persuasion, and in due time it shall be yours. Mr. Hayley, who tenderly sympathizes with you, has enjoined me to send you as pressing an invitation as I can frame, to join me at this place. I have every motive to wish your consent; both your benefit and my own, which, I believe, would be abundantly answered by your coming, ought to make me eloquent in such a cause. Here you will find silence and retirement in perfection, when you would seek them; and here such company as I have no doubt would suit you, all cheerful, but not noisy; and all alike disposed to love you: you and I seem to have here a fair opportunity of meeting. It were a pity we should be in the same county and not come together. I am here till the seventeenth of September, an interval that will afford you time to make the necessary arrangements, and to gratify me at last with an interview, which I have long desired. Let me hear from you soon, that I may have double pleasure, the pleasure of expecting as well as that of seeing you.

[664] Mr. Hurdis had just lost a favourite sister.

Mrs. Unwin, I thank God, though still a sufferer by her last illness, is much better, and has received considerable benefit by the air of Eartham. She adds to mine her affectionate compliments, and joins me and Hayley in this invitation.

Mr. Romney is here, and a young man a cousin of mine. I tell you who we are, that you may not be afraid of us.

Adieu! May the Comforter of all the afflicted, who seek him, be yours! God bless you!

W. C.

TO LADY HESKETH.

Eartham, Aug. 26, 1792.

I know not how it is, my dearest coz, but, in a new scene and surrounded with strange objects, I find my powers of thinking dissipated to a degree, that makes it difficult to me even to write a letter, and even a letter to you; but such a letter as I can, I will, and have the fairest chance to succeed this morning, Hayley, Romney, Hayley's son, and Beau, being all gone together to the sea for bathing. The sea, you must know, is nine miles off, so that, unless stupidity prevent, I shall have opportunity to write not only to you, but to poor Hurdis also, who is broken-hearted for the loss of his favourite sister, lately dead; and whose letter, giving an account of it, which I received yesterday, drew tears from the eyes of all our party. My only comfort respecting even yourself is, that you write in good spirits, and assure me that you are in a state of recovery; otherwise I should mourn not only for Hurdis, but for myself, lest a certain event should reduce me, and in a short time too, to a situation as distressing as his; for though nature designed you only for my cousin, you have had a sister's place in my affections ever since I knew you. The reason is, I suppose, that, having no sister, the daughter of my own mother, I thought it proper to have one, the daughter of yours. Certain it is, that I can by no means afford to lose you, and that, unless you will be upon honour with me to give me always a true account of yourself, at least when we are not together, I shall always be unhappy, because always suspicious that you deceive me.

Now for ourselves. I am, without the least dissimulation, in good health; my spirits are about as good as you have ever seen them; and if increase of appetite, and a double portion of sleep, be advantageous, such are the advantages that I have received from this migration. As to that gloominess of mind, which I have had these twenty years, it cleaves to me even here, and, could I be translated to Paradise, unless I left my body behind me, would cleave to me even there also. It is my companion for life, and nothing will ever divorce us. So much for myself. Mrs. Unwin is evidently the better for her jaunt, though by no means as she was before this last attack; still wanting help when she would rise from her seat, and a support in walking; but she is able to use more exercise than she could at home, and moves with rather a less tottering step. God knows what he designs for me, but when I see those who are dearer to me than myself distempered and enfeebled, and myself as strong as in the days of my youth, I tremble for the solitude in which a few years may place me. I wish her and you to die before me, but not till I am more likely to follow immediately. Enough of this!

Romney has drawn me in crayons, and, in the opinion of all here, with his best hand, and with the most exact resemblance possible.[665]

[665] This portrait is now in the possession of Dr. Johnson's family.

The seventeenth of September is the day on which I intend to leave Eartham. We shall then have been six weeks resident here; a holiday time long enough for a man who has much to do. And now, farewell!

W. C.

P.S. Hayley, whose love for me seems to be truly that of a brother, has given me his picture, drawn by Romney, about fifteen years ago; an admirable likeness.

TO MRS. CHARLOTTE SMITH.[666]

[666] Private correspondence.

Eartham, Sept. 1792.

Dear Madam,--Your two counsellors are of one mind. We both are of opinion that you will do well to make your second volume a suitable companion to the first, by embellishing it in the same manner; and have no doubt, considering the well-deserved popularity of your verse, that the expense will be amply refunded by the public.

I would give you, madam, not my counsel only, but consolation also, were I not disqualified for that delightful service by a great dearth of it in my own experience. I too often seek but cannot find it. Of this, however, I can assure you, if that may at all comfort you, that both my friend Hayley and myself most truly sympathize with you under all your sufferings. Neither have you, I am persuaded, in any degree lost the interest you always had in him, or your claim to any service that it may be in his power to render you. Had you no other title to his esteem, his respect for your talents, and his feelings for your misfortunes, must ensure to you the friendship of such a man for ever. I know, however, there are seasons when, look which way we will, we see the same dismal gloom enveloping all objects. This is itself an affliction; and the worse, because it makes us think ourselves more unhappy than we are: and at such a season it is, I doubt not, that you suspect a diminution of our friend's zeal to serve you.

I was much struck by an expression in your letter to Hayley, where you say that you "will endeavour to take an interest in green leaves again." This seems the sound of my own voice reflected to me from a distance; I have so often had the same thought and desire. A day scarcely passes, at this season of the year, when I do not contemplate the trees so soon to be stript, and say, "Perhaps I shall never see you clothed again." Every year, as it passes, makes this expectation more reasonable; and the year with me cannot be very distant, when the event will verify it. Well, may God grant us a good hope of arriving in due time where the leaves never fall, and all will be right!

Mrs. Unwin, I think, is a little better than when you saw her; but still so feeble as to keep me in a state of continual apprehension. I live under the point of a sword suspended by a hair. Adieu, my dear madam; and believe me to remain your sincere and affectionate humble servant,

W. C.

TO LADY HESKETH.

Eartham, Sept. 9, 1792.

My dearest Cousin,--I determine, if possible, to send you one more letter, or at least, if possible, once more to send you something like one, before we leave Eartham. But I am in truth so unaccountably local in the use of my pen, that, like the man in the fable, who could leap well no where but at Rhodes, I seem incapable of writing at all, except at Weston. This is, as I have already told you, a delightful place; more beautiful scenery I have never beheld, nor expect to behold; but the charms of it, uncommon as they are, have not in the least alienated my affections from Weston. The genius of that place suits me better, it has an air of snug concealment, in which a disposition like mine feels peculiarly gratified; whereas here I see from every window woods like forests, and hills like mountains, a wildness, in short, that rather increases my natural melancholy, and which, were it not for the agreeables I find within, would soon convince me that mere change of place can avail me little. Accordingly, I have not looked out for a house in Sussex, nor shall.

The intended day of our departure continues to be the seventeenth. I hope to re-conduct Mrs. Unwin to the Lodge with her health considerably mended; but it is in the article of speech chiefly, and in her powers of walking, that she is sensible of much improvement. Her sight and her hand still fail her, so that she can neither read nor work; both mortifying circumstances to her, who is never willingly idle.

On the eighteenth I purpose to dine with the General, and to rest that night at Kingston, but the pleasure I shall have in the interview will hardly be greater than the pain I shall feel at the end of it, for we shall part, probably to meet no more.

Johnny, I know, has told you that Mr. Hurdis is here. Distressed by the loss of his sister, he has renounced the place where she died for ever, and is about to enter on a new course of life at Oxford. You would admire him much, he is gentle in his manners, and delicate in his person, resembling our poor friend, Unwin, both in face and figure, more than any one I have seen. But he has not, at least he has not at present, his vivacity.

I have corresponded since I came here with Mrs. Courtenay, and had yesterday a very kind letter from her.

Adieu, my dear; may God bless you. Write to me as soon as you can after the twentieth. I shall then be at Weston, and indulging myself in the hope that I shall ere long see you there also.

W. C.

* * * * *

Hayley, speaking of the manner in which they employed their time at Eartham, observes, "Homer was not the immediate object of our attention. The morning hours that we could bestow upon books were chiefly devoted to a complete revisal and correction of all the translations, which my friend had finished, from the Latin and Italian poetry of Milton: and we generally amused ourselves after dinner in forming together a rapid metrical version of Andreini's Adamo."[667] He also mentions the interest excited in Cowper's mind by his son, a fine boy of eleven years, whose uncommon talents and engaging qualities endeared him so much to the poet, that he allowed and invited him to criticise his Homer. A specimen of this juvenile criticism will appear in the future correspondence. This interesting boy, with a young companion, employed themselves regularly twice a day in drawing Mrs. Unwin in a commodious garden-chair, round the airy hill at Eartham. "To Cowper and to me," he adds, "it was a very pleasing spectacle to see the benevolent vivacity of blooming youth thus continually labouring for the ease, health, and amusement of disabled age."

[667] This is one of those scarce and curious books which is not to be procured without difficulty. It is a dramatic representation of the Fall, remarkable, not so much for any peculiar vigour, either in the conception or execution of the plan, as for exhibiting that mode of celebrating sacred subjects, formerly known under the appellation of mysteries. A further interest is also attached to it from the popular persuasion that this work first suggested to Milton the design of his Paradise Lost. There is the same allegorical imagery, and sufficient to form the frame-work of that immortal poem. Johnson, in his Life of Milton, alludes to the report, without arriving at any decided conclusion on the subject, but states, that Milton's original intention was to have formed, not a narrative, but a dramatic work, and that he subsequently began to reduce it to its present form, about the year 1655. Some sketches of this plan are to be seen in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. Dr. Joseph Warton and Hayley both incline to the opinion that the Adamo of Andreini first suggested the hint of the Paradise Lost.

That the Italians claim this honour for their countryman is evident from the following passage from Tiraboschi, which, to those of our readers who are conversant with that language, will be an interesting quotation. "Certo benche L'Adamo dell Andreini sia in confronto dell Paradiso Perduto ciò che è il Poema di Ennio in confronto a quel di Virgilio, nondimeno non può negarsi che le idee gigantesche, delle quali l'autore Inglese ha abbellito il suo Poema, di Satana, che entra nel Paradiso terrestre, e arde d'invidia al vedere la felicita dell' Uomo, del congresso de Demonj, della battaglia degli Angioli contra Lucifero, e più altre sommiglianti immagini veggonsi nell' _Adamo_ adombrate per modo, che a me sembra molto credibile, che anche il Milton dalle immondezze, se cosi è lecito dire, dell' Andreini raccogliesse l'oro, di cui adorno il suo Poema. Per altro _L'Adamo_ dell' Andreini, benche abbia alcuni tratti di pessimo gusto, ne hà altri ancora, che si posson proporre come modello di excellente poesia."

It is no disparagement to Milton to have been indebted to the conceptions of another for the origin of his great undertaking. If Milton borrowed, it was to repay with largeness of interest. The only use that he made of the suggestion was, to stamp upon it the immortality of his own creative genius, and to produce a work which is destined to survive to the latest period of British literature.

For further information on this subject, we refer the reader to the "Inquiry into the Origin of Paradise Lost," in Todd's excellent edition of Milton; and in Hayley's Life of Milton will be found Cowper's and Hayley's joint version of the first three acts of the Adamo above mentioned.

In addition to the Adamo of Andreini, Milton is said to have been indebted to the Du Bartas of Sylvester, and to the Adamus Exul of Grotius. Hayley, in his Life of Milton, enumerates also a brief list of Italian writers, who may have possibly have thrown some suggestions into the mind of the poet. But the boldest act of imposition ever recorded in the annals of literature, is the charge preferred against Milton by Lauder, who endeavoured to prove that he was "the worst and greatest of all plagiaries." He asserted that "Milton had borrowed the substance of whole books together, and that there was scarcely a single thought or sentiment in his poem which he had not stolen from some author or other, notwithstanding his vain pretence to _things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme_." In support of this charge, he was base enough to corrupt the text of those poets, whom he produced as evidences against the originality of Milton, by interpolating several verses either of his own fabrication, or from the Latin translation of _Paradise Lost_, by William Hog. This gross libel he entitled an "Essay on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns;" and so far imposed on Dr. Johnson, by his representations, as to prevail upon him to furnish a preface to his work. The public are indebted to Dr. Douglas, the Bishop of Salisbury, for first detecting this imposture, in a pamphlet entitled "Milton vindicated from the charge of Plagiarism brought against him by Mr. Lauder." Thus exposed to infamy and contempt, he made a public recantation of his error, and soon after quitted England for the West Indies, where he died in 1771.

The reader will perceive from the last letter, that Cowper, amused as he was with the scenery of Sussex, began to feel the powerful attraction of home.

TO MRS. COURTENAY,[668] WESTON-UNDERWOOD.[669]

[668] Now Dowager Lady Throckmorton.

[669] Private correspondence.

Eartham, Sept. 10, 1792.

My dear Catharina,--I am not so uncourteous a knight as to leave your last kind letter, and the last I hope that I shall receive for a long time to come, without an attempt, at least, to acknowledge and to send you something in the shape of an answer to it; but, having been obliged to dose myself last night with laudanum, on account of a little nervous fever, to which I am always subject, and for which I find it the best remedy, I feel myself this morning particularly under the influence of Lethean vapours, and, consequently, in danger of being uncommonly stupid!

You could hardly have sent me intelligence that would have gratified me more than that of my two dear friends, Sir John and Lady Throckmorton, having departed from Paris two days before the terrible 10th of August. I have had many anxious thoughts on their account; and am truly happy to learn that they have sought a more peaceful region, while it was yet permitted them to do so. They will not, I trust, revisit those scenes of tumult and horror while they shall continue to merit that description. We are here all of one mind respecting the cause in which the Parisians are engaged; wish them a free people, and as happy as they can wish themselves. But their conduct has not always pleased us: we are shocked at their sanguinary proceedings, and begin to fear, myself in particular, that they will prove themselves unworthy, because incapable of enjoying it, of the inestimable blessing of liberty. My daily toast is, Sobriety and freedom to the French; for they seem as destitute of the former as they are eager to secure the latter.

We still hold our purpose of leaving Eartham on the seventeenth; and again my fears on Mrs. Unwin's account begin to trouble me; but they are now not quite so reasonable as in the first instance. If she could bear the fatigue of travelling then, she is more equal to it at present; and, supposing that nothing happens to alarm her, which is very probable, may be expected to reach Weston in much better condition than when she left it. Her improvement, however, is chiefly in her looks, and in the articles of speaking and walking; for she can neither rise from her chair without help, nor walk without a support, nor read, nor use her needle. Give my love to the good doctor, and make him acquainted with the state of his patient, since he, of all men, seems to have the best right to know it.

I am proud that you are pleased with the Epitaph[670] I sent you, and shall be still prouder to see it perpetuated by the chisel. It is all that I have done since here I came, and all that I have been able to do. I wished, indeed, to have requited Romney, for his well-drawn copy of me, in rhyme; and have more than once or twice attempted it: but I find, like the man in the fable, who could leap only at Rhodes, that verse is almost impossible to me, except at Weston.--Tell my friend George that I am every day mindful of him, and always love him; and bid him by no means to vex himself about the tardiness of Andrews.[671] Remember me affectionately to William, and to Pitcairn, whom I shall hope to find with you at my return; and, should you see Mr. Buchanan, to him also. I have now charged you with commissions enow, and having added Mrs. Unwin's best compliments, and told you that I long to see you again, will conclude myself,

My dear Catharina, Most truly yours, W. C.

[670] On Fop, Lady Throckmorton's dog.

[671] A stone-mason, who was making a pedestal for an antique bust of Homer.

* * * * *

Their departure from Eartham was a scene of affecting interest, and a perfect contrast to the gaiety of their arrival. Anxious to relieve the mind of Hayley from any apprehension for their safety, Cowper addressed to him the following letter from Kingston.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

The Sun, at Kingston, Sept. 18, 1792.

My dear Brother,--With no sinister accident to retard or terrify us, we find ourselves at a quarter before one, arrived safe at Kingston. I left you with a heavy heart, and with a heavy heart took leave of our dear Tom,[672] at the bottom of the chalk-hill. But, soon after this last separation, my troubles gushed from my eyes, and then I was better.

[672] Hayley's son.

We must now prepare for our visit to the General. I add no more, therefore, than our dearest remembrances and prayers that God may bless you and yours, and reward you an hundred-fold for all your kindness. Tell Tom I shall always hold him dear for his affectionate attentions to Mrs. Unwin. From her heart the memory of him can never be erased. Johnny loves you all, and has his share in all these acknowledgements.

Adieu! W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, Sept. 21, 1792.

My dear Hayley,--Chaos himself, even the chaos of Milton, is not surrounded with more confusion, nor has a mind more completely in a hubbub, than I experience at the present moment. At our first arrival, after long absence, we find a hundred orders to servants necessary, a thousand things to be restored to their proper places, and an endless variety of minutiæ to be adjusted; which, though individually of little importance, are momentous in the aggregate. In these circumstances I find myself so indisposed to writing, that, save to yourself, I would on no account attempt it; but to you I will give such a recital as I can of all that has passed since I sent you that short note from Kingston, knowing that, if it be a perplexed recital, you will consider the cause and pardon it. I will begin with a remark in which I am inclined to think you will agree with me, that there is sometimes more true heroism passing in a corner, and on occasions that make no noise in the world, than has often been exercised by those whom that world esteems her greatest heroes, and on occasions the most illustrious. I hope so at least; for all the heroism I have to boast, and all the opportunities I have of displaying any, are of a private nature. After writing the note, I immediately began to prepare for my appointed visit to Ham; but the struggles that I had with my own spirit, labouring as I did under the most dreadful dejection, are never to be told. I would have given the world to have been excused. I went, however, and carried my point against myself, with a heart riven asunder--I have reasons for all this anxiety, which I cannot relate now. The visit, however, passed off well, and we returned in the dark to Kingston; I, with a lighter heart than I had known since my departure from Eartham, and Mary too, for she had suffered hardly less than myself, and chiefly on my account. That night we rested well in our inn, and at twenty minutes after eight next morning set off for London; exactly at ten we reached Mr. Rose's door; we drank a dish of chocolate with him, and proceeded, Mr. Rose riding with us as far as St. Albans. From this time we met with no impediment. In the dark, and in a storm, at eight at night, we found ourselves at our own back-door. Mrs. Unwin was very near slipping out of the chair in which she was taken from the chaise, but at last was landed safe. We all have had a good night, and are all well this morning.

God bless you, my dearest brother.

W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, Oct. 2, 1792.

My dear Hayley,--A bad night, succeeded by an east wind, and a sky all in sables, have such an effect on my spirits, that, if I did not consult my own comfort more than yours, I should not write to-day, for I shall not entertain you much: yet your letter, though containing no very pleasant tidings, has afforded me some relief. It tells me, indeed, that you have been dispirited yourself, and that poor little Tom, the faithful 'squire of my Mary, has been seriously indisposed. All this grieves me: but then there is a warmth of heart and a kindness in it that do me good. I will endeavour not to repay you in notes of sorrow and despondence, though all my sprightly chords seem broken. In truth, one day excepted, I have not seen the day when I have been cheerful since I left you. My spirits, I think, are almost constantly lower than they were; the approach of winter is perhaps the cause, and if it is, I have nothing better to expect for a long time to come.

Yesterday was a day of assignation with myself, the day of which I said some days before it came, when that day comes I will begin my dissertations. Accordingly, when it came, I prepared to do so; filled a letter-case with fresh paper, furnished myself with a pretty good pen, and replenished my ink-bottle; but, partly from one cause, and partly from another, chiefly, however, from distress and dejection, after writing and obliterating about six lines, in the composition of which I spent near an hour, I was obliged to relinquish the attempt. An attempt so unsuccessful could have no other effect than to dishearten me, and it has had that effect to such a degree, that I know not when I shall find courage to make another. At present I shall certainly abstain, since at present I cannot well afford to expose myself to the danger of a fresh mortification.

W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, Oct. 13, 1792.

I began a letter to you yesterday, my dearest brother, and proceeded through two sides of the sheet, but so much of my nervous fever found its way into it, that, looking over it this morning, I determined not to send it.

I have risen, though not in good spirits, yet in better than I generally do of late, and therefore will not address you in the melancholy tone that belongs to my worst feelings.

I began to be restless about your portrait, and to say, how long shall I have to wait for it? I wished it here for many reasons: the sight of it will be a comfort to me, for I not only love but am proud of you, as of a conquest made in my old age. Johnny goes to town on Monday, on purpose to call on Romney, to whom he shall give all proper information concerning its conveyance hither. The name of a man whom I esteem as I do Romney, ought not to be unmusical in my ears; but his name will be so till I shall have paid him a debt justly due to him, by doing such poetical honours to it as I intend. Heaven knows when that intention will be executed, for the muse is still as obdurate and as coy as ever.

Your kind postscript is just arrived, and gives me great pleasure. When I cannot see you myself, it seems some comfort, however, that you have been seen by another known to me; and who will tell me in a few days that he has seen you. Your wishes to disperse my melancholy would, I am sure, prevail, did that event depend on the warmth and sincerity with which you frame them; but it has baffled both wishes and prayers, and those the most fervent that could be made, so many years, that the case seems hopeless. But no more of this at present.

Your verses to Austen are as sweet as the honey that they accompany: kind, friendly, witty, and elegant! When shall I be able to do the like? Perhaps when my Mary, like your Tom, shall cease to be an invalid, I may recover a power, at least, to do something. I sincerely rejoice in the dear little man's restoration. My Mary continues, I hope, to mend a little.

W. C.

TO MRS. KING.[673]

[673] Private correspondence.

Oct. 14, 1792.

My dear Madam,--Your kind inquiries after mine and Mrs. Unwin's health will not permit me to be silent; though I am and have long been so indisposed to writing, that even a letter has almost overtasked me.

Your last but one found me on the point of setting out for Sussex, whither I went with Mrs. Unwin, on a visit to my friend, Mr. Hayley. We spent six weeks at Eartham, and returned on the nineteenth of September. I had hopes that change of air and change of scene might be serviceable both to my poor invalid and me. She, I hope, has received some benefit; and I am not the worse for it myself; but, at the same time, must acknowledge that I cannot boast of much amendment. The time we spent there could not fail to pass as agreeably as her weakness, and my spirits, at a low ebb, would permit. Hayley is one of the most agreeable men, as well as one of the most cordial friends. His house is elegant; his library large, and well chosen; and he is surrounded by the most delightful scenery. But I have made the experiment only to prove, what indeed I knew before, that creatures are physicians of little value, and that health and cure are from God only. Henceforth, therefore, I shall wait for those blessings from Him, and expect them at no other hand. In the meantime, I have the comfort to be able to tell you that Mrs. Unwin, on the whole, is restored beyond the most sanguine expectations I had when I wrote last; and that, as to myself, it is not much otherwise with me than it has been these twenty years; except that this season of the year is always unfavourable to my spirits.

I rejoice that you have had the pleasure of another interview with Mr. Martyn; and am glad that the trifles I have sent you afforded him any amusement. This letter has already given you to understand that I am at present no artificer of verse; and that, consequently, I have nothing new to communicate. When I have, I shall do it to none more readily than to yourself.

My dear madam, Very affectionately yours, W. C.

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.[674]

[674] Private correspondence.

Oct. 18, 1792.

My dear Friend,--I thought that the wonder had been all on my side, having been employed in wondering at your silence, as long as you at mine. Soon after our arrival at Eartham, I received a letter from you, which I answered, if not by the return of the post, at least in a day or two. Not that I should have insisted on the ceremonial of letter for letter, during so long a period, could I have found leisure to double your debt; but while there, I had no opportunity for writing, except now and then a short one; for we breakfasted early, studied Milton as soon as breakfast was over, and continued in that employment till Mrs. Unwin came forth from her chamber, to whom all the rest of my time was necessarily devoted. Our return to Weston was on the nineteenth of last month, according to your information. You will naturally think that, in the interval, I must have had sufficient leisure to give you notice of our safe arrival. But the fact has been otherwise. I have neither been well myself, nor is Mrs. Unwin, though better, so much improved in her health as not still to require my continual assistance. My disorder has been the old one, to which I have been subject so many years, and especially about this season--a nervous fever; not, indeed, so oppressive as it has sometimes proved, but sufficiently alarming both to Mrs. Unwin and myself, and such as made it neither easy nor proper for me to make much use of my pen while it continued. At present I am tolerably free from it; a blessing for which I believe myself partly indebted to the use of James's powder, in small quantities; and partly to a small quantity of laudanum, taken every night; but chiefly to a manifestation of God's presence vouchsafed to me a few days since; transient, indeed, and dimly seen through a mist of many fears and troubles, but sufficient to convince me, at least while the Enemy's power is a little restrained, that He has not cast me off for ever.

Our visit was a pleasant one; as pleasant as Mrs. Unwin's weakness and the state of my spirits, never very good, would allow. As to my own health, I never expected that it would be much improved by the journey; nor have I found it so. Some benefit, indeed, I hoped; and, perhaps, a little more than I found. But the season was, after the first fortnight, extremely unfavourable, stormy, and wet; and the prospects, though grand and magnificent, yet rather of a melancholy cast, and consequently not very propitious to me. The cultivated appearance of Weston suits my frame of mind far better than wild hills that aspire to be mountains, covered with vast unfrequented woods, and here and there affording a peep between their summits at the distant ocean. Within doors all was hospitality and kindness, but the scenery _would_ have its effect; and, though delightful in the extreme to those who had spirits to bear it, was too gloomy for me.

Yours, my dear friend, Most sincerely, W. C.

TO JOHN JOHNSON, ESQ.

Weston, Oct. 19, 1792.

My dearest Johnny,--You are too useful when you are here not to be missed on a hundred occasions daily; and too much domesticated with us not to be regretted always. I hope, therefore, that your month or six weeks will not be like many that I have known, capable of being drawn out into any length whatever, and productive of nothing but disappointment.

I have done nothing since you went, except that I have composed the better half of a sonnet to Romney; yet even this ought to bear an earlier date, for I began to be haunted with a desire to do it long before we came out of Sussex, and have daily attempted it ever since.

It would be well for the reading part of the world, if the writing part were, many of them, as dull as I am. Yet even this small produce, which my sterile intellect has hardly yielded at last, may serve to convince you that in point of spirits I am not worse.

In fact, I am a little better. The powders and the laudanum together have, for the present at least, abated the fever that consumes them; and in measure as the fever abates, I acquire a less discouraging view of things, and with it a little power to exert myself.

In the evenings I read Baker's Chronicle to Mrs. Unwin, having no other history, and hope in time to be as well versed in it, as his admirer Sir Roger de Coverley.

W. C.

TO JOHN JOHNSON, ESQ.

Weston, Oct. 22, 1792.

My dear Johnny,--Here am I, with I know not how many letters to answer, and no time to do it in. I exhort you, therefore, to set a proper value on this, as proving your priority in my attentions, though in other respects likely to be of little value.

You do well to sit for your picture, and give very sufficient reasons for doing it; you will also, I doubt not, take care that, when future generations shall look at it, some spectator or other shall say, this is the picture of a good man and a useful one.

And now God bless you, my dear Johnny. I proceed much after the old rate; rising cheerless and distressed in the morning, and brightening a little as the day goes on.

Adieu, W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, Oct. 28, 1792.

Nothing done, my dearest brother, nor likely to be done at present; yet I purpose in a day or two to make another attempt, to which, however, I shall address myself with fear and trembling, like a man who, having sprained his wrist, dreads to use it. I have not, indeed, like such a man, injured myself by any extraordinary exertion, but seem as much enfeebled as if I had. The consciousness that there is so much to do, and nothing done, is a burden I am not able to bear. Milton especially is my grievance, and I might almost as well be haunted by his ghost as goaded with continual reproaches for neglecting him. I will therefore begin; I will do my best; and if, after all, that best prove good for nothing, I will even send the notes, worthless as they are, that I have made already; a measure very disagreeable to myself, and to which nothing but necessity shall compel me. I shall rejoice to see those new samples of your biography,[675] which you give me to expect.

[675] Hayley's Life of Milton.

Allons! Courage!--Here comes something however; produced after a gestation as long as that of a pregnant woman. It is the debt long unpaid, the compliment due to Romney; and if it has your approbation, I will send it, or you may send it for me. I must premise, however, that I intended nothing less than a sonnet when I began. I know not why, but I said to myself, it shall not be a sonnet; accordingly I attempted it in one sort of measure, then in a second, then in a third, till I had made the trial in half a dozen different kinds of shorter verse, and behold it is a sonnet at last. The fates would have it so.

TO GEORGE ROMNEY, ESQ.

Romney! expert infallibly to trace, On chart or canvas, not the form alone, And semblance, but, however faintly shown, The mind's impression too on every face, With strokes, that time ought never to erase: Thou hast so pencill'd mine, that though I own The subject worthless, I have never known The artist shining with superior grace.

But this I mark, that symptoms none of woe In thy incomparable work appear: Well! I am satisfied, it should be so, Since, on maturer thought, the cause is clear;

For in my looks what sorrow coulds't thou see, While I was Hayley's guest, and sat to thee?

W. C.

TO JOHN JOHNSON, ESQ.[676]

[676] Private correspondence.

Nov. 5, 1792.

My dearest Johnny,--I have done nothing since you went, except that I have finished the Sonnet which I told you I had begun, and sent it to Hayley, who is well pleased _therewith_, and has by this time transmitted it to whom it most concerns.

I would not give the algebraist sixpence for his encomiums on my Task, if he condemns my Homer, which, I know, in point of language, is equal to it, and in variety of numbers superior. But the character of the former having been some years established, he follows the general cry; and should Homer establish himself as well, and I trust he will hereafter, I shall have his warm suffrage for that also. But if not--it is no matter. Swift says somewhere,--There are a few good judges of poetry in the world, who lend their taste to those who have none: and your man of figures is probably one of the borrowers.

Adieu--in great haste. Our united love attends yourself and yours, whose I am most truly and affectionately.

W. C.

TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ.

Weston, Nov. 9, 1792.

My dear Friend,--I wish that I were as industrious and as much occupied as you, though in a different way; but it is not so with me. Mrs. Unwin's great debility (who is not yet able to move without assistance) is of itself a hindrance such as would effectually disable me. Till she can work, and read, and fill up her time as usual (all which is at present entirely out of her power) I may now and then find time to write a letter, but I shall write nothing more. I cannot sit with my pen in my hand and my books before me, while she is in effect in solitude, silent, and looking at the fire. To this hindrance that other has been added, of which you are already aware, a want of spirits, such as I have never known, when I was not absolutely laid by, since I commenced an author. How long I shall be continued in these uncomfortable circumstances is known only to Him who, as he will, disposes of us all. I may be yet able, perhaps, to prepare the first book of the Paradise Lost for the press, before it will be wanted; and Johnson himself seems to think there will be no haste for the second. But poetry is my favourite employment, and all my poetical operations are in the meantime suspended; for, while a work to which I have bound myself remains unaccomplished, I can do nothing else.

Johnson's plan of prefixing my phiz to the new edition of my poems is by no means a pleasant one to me, and so I told him in a letter I sent him from Eartham, in which I assured him that my objections to it would not be easily surmounted. But if you judge that it may really have an effect in advancing the sale, I would not be so squeamish as to suffer the spirit of prudery to prevail in me to his disadvantage. Somebody told an author, I forget whom, that there was more vanity in refusing his picture than in granting it, on which he instantly complied. I do not perfectly feel all the force of the argument, but it shall content me that he did.

I do most sincerely rejoice in the success of your publication,[677] and have no doubt that my prophecy concerning your success in greater matters will be fulfilled. We are naturally pleased when our friends approve what we approve ourselves; how much then must I be pleased, when you speak so kindly of Johnny! I know him to be all that you think him, and love him entirely.

[677] Decisions of the English Courts.

Adieu! We expect you at Christmas, and shall therefore rejoice when Christmas comes. Let nothing interfere.

Ever yours, W. C.

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.[678]

[678] Private correspondence.

Nov. 11, 1792.

My dear Friend,--I am not so insensible of your kindness in making me an exception from the number of your correspondents, to whom you forbid the hope of hearing from you till your present labours are ended, as to make you wait longer for an answer to your last; which, indeed, would have had its answer before this time, had it been possible for me to write. But so many have demands upon me of a similar kind, and, while Mrs. Unwin continues an invalid, my opportunities of writing are so few, that I am constrained to incur a long arrear to some, with whom I would wish to be punctual. She can at present neither work nor read; and, till she can do both, and amuse herself as usual, my own amusements of the pen must be suspended.

I, like you, have a work before me, and a work to which I should be glad to address myself in earnest, but cannot do it at present. When the opportunity comes, I shall, like you, be under a necessity of interdicting some of my usual correspondents, and of shortening my letters to the excepted few. Many letters and much company are incompatible with authorship, and the one as much as the other. It will be long, I hope, before the world is put in possession of a publication, which you design should be posthumous.

Oh for the day when your expectations of my complete deliverance shall be verified! At present it seems very remote: so distant, indeed, that hardly the faintest streak of it is visible in my horizon. The glimpse, with which I was favoured about a month since, has never been repeated; and the depression of my spirits has. The future appears gloomy as ever; and I seem to myself to be scrambling always in the dark, among rocks and precipices, without a guide, but with an enemy ever at my heels, prepared to push me headlong. Thus I have spent twenty years, but thus I shall not spend twenty years more. Long ere that period arrives, the grand question concerning my everlasting weal or woe will be decided.

Adieu, my dear friend. I have exhausted my time, though not filled my paper.

Truly yours, W. C.

TO JOHN JOHNSON, ESQ.

Weston, Nov. 20, 1792.

My dearest Johnny,--I give you many thanks for your rhymes, and your verses without rhyme; for your poetical dialogue between wood and stone: between Homer's head, and the head of Samuel; kindly intended, I know very well, for my amusement, and that amused me much.

The successor of the clerk defunct, for whom I used to write, arrived here this morning, with a recommendatory letter from Joe Rye, and an humble petition of his own, entreating me to assist him as I had assisted his predecessor. I have undertaken the service, although with no little reluctance, being involved in many arrears on other subjects, and having very little dependence at present on my ability to write at all. I proceed exactly as when you were here--a letter now and then before breakfast, and the rest of my time all holiday; if holiday it may be called, that is spent chiefly in moping and musing, and "_forecasting the fashion of uncertain evils_."

The fever on my spirits has harassed me much, and I have never had so good a night, nor so quiet a rising, since you went, as on this very morning; a relief that I account particularly seasonable and propitious, because I had, in my intentions, devoted this morning to you, and could not have fulfilled those intentions, had I been as spiritless as I generally am.

I am glad that Johnson is in no haste for Milton, for I seem myself not likely to address myself presently to that concern, with any prospect of success; yet something now and then, like a secret whisper, assures and encourages me that it will yet be done.

W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, Nov. 25, 1792.

How shall I thank you enough for the interest you take in my future Miltonic labours, and the assistance you promise me in the performance of them; I will some time or other, if I live, and live a poet, acknowledge your friendship in some of my best verse; the most suitable return one poet can make to another: in the meantime, I love you, and am sensible of all your kindness. You wish me warm in my work, and I ardently wish the same: but when I shall be so God only knows. My melancholy, which seemed a little alleviated for a few days, has gathered about me again with as black a cloud as ever; the consequence is absolute incapacity to begin.

I was for some years dirge-writer to the town of Northampton, being employed by the clerk of the principal parish there to furnish him with an annual copy of verses proper to be printed at the foot of his bill of mortality; but the clerk died, and, hearing nothing for two years from his successor, I well hoped that I was out of my office. The other morning however Sam announced the new clerk; he came to solicit the same service as I had rendered his predecessor, and I reluctantly complied; doubtful, indeed, whether I was capable. I have however achieved that labour, and I have done nothing more. I am just sent for up to Mary, dear Mary! Adieu! she is as well as when I left you, I would I could say better. Remember us both affectionately to your sweet boy, and trust me for being

Most truly yours, W. C.

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.[679]

[679] Private correspondence.

Dec. 9, 1792.

My dear Friend,--You need not be uneasy on the subject of Milton. I shall not find that labour too heavy for me, if I have health and leisure. The season of the year is unfavourable to me respecting the former; and Mrs. Unwin's present weakness allows me less of the latter than the occasion seems to call for. But the business is in no haste. The artists employed to furnish the embellishments are not likely to be very expeditious; and a small portion only of the work will be wanted from me at once; for the intention is to deal it out to the public piece-meal. I am, therefore, under no great anxiety on that account. It is not, indeed, an employment that I should have chosen for myself; because poetry pleases and amuses me more, and would cost me less labour, properly so called. All this I felt before I engaged with Johnson; and did, in the first instance, actually decline the service; but he was urgent; and, at last, I suffered myself to be persuaded.

The season of the year, as I have already said, is particularly adverse to me: yet not in itself, perhaps, more adverse than any other; but the approach of it always reminds me of the same season in the dreadful seventy-three, and in the more dreadful eighty-six. I cannot help terrifying myself with doleful misgivings and apprehensions; nor is the enemy negligent to seize all the advantage that the occasion gives him. Thus, hearing much from him, and having little or no sensible support from God, I suffer inexpressible things till January is over. And even then, whether increasing years have made me more liable to it, or despair, the longer it lasts, grows naturally darker, I find myself more inclined to melancholy than I was a few years since. God only knows where this will end; but where it is likely to end, unless he interpose powerfully in my favour, all may know.

I remain, my dear friend, most sincerely yours, W. C.

TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.

Weston, Dec. 16, 1792.

My dear Sir,--We differ so little, that it is pity we should not agree. The possibility of restoring our diseased government is, I think, the only point on which we are not of one mind. If you are right, and it cannot be touched in the medical way, without danger of absolute ruin to the constitution, keep the doctors at a distance say I--and let us live as long as we can. But perhaps physicians might be found of skill sufficient for the purpose, were they but as willing as able. Who are they? Not those honest blunderers, the mob, but our governors themselves. As it is in the power of any individual to be honest if he will, any body of men are, as it seems to me, equally possessed of the same option. For I can never persuade myself to think the world so constituted by the Author of it, and human society, which is his ordinance, so shabby a business, that the buying and selling of votes and consciences should be essential to its existence. As to multiplied representation I know not that I foresee any great advantage likely to arise from that. Provided there be but a reasonable number of reasonable heads laid together for the good of the nation, the end may as well be answered by five hundred as it would be by a thousand, and perhaps better. But then they should be honest as well as wise, and, in order that they may be so, they should put it out of their own power to be otherwise. This they might certainly do if they would; and, would they do it, I am not convinced that any great mischief would ensue. You say, "somebody must have influence," but I see no necessity for it. Let integrity of intention and a due share of ability be supposed, and the influence will be in the right place; it will all centre in the zeal and good of the nation. That will influence their debates and decisions, and nothing else ought to do it. You will say, perhaps, that wise men, and honest men, as they are supposed, they are yet liable to be split into almost as many differences of opinion as there are individuals; but I rather think not. It is observed of Prince Eugene and the Duke of Marlborough, that each always approved and seconded the plans and views of the other; and the reason given for it is that they were men of equal ability. The same cause that could make two unanimous would make twenty so, and would at least secure a majority among as many hundreds.

As to the reformation of the church, I want none, unless by a better provision for the inferior clergy; and, if that could be brought about by emaciating a little some of our too corpulent dignitaries, I should be well contented.

The dissenters, I think, Catholics and others, have all a right to the privileges of all other Englishmen, because to deprive them is persecution, and persecution on any account, but especially on a religious one, is an abomination. But after all, _valeat respublica_. I love my country, I love my king, and I wish peace and prosperity to Old England.[680]

Adieu, W. C.

[680] The question of a Reform in Parliament was at this time beginning to engage the public attention, and Mr. Grey (now Earl Grey) had recently announced his intention in the House of Commons of bringing forward that important subject in the ensuing session of Parliament. It was accordingly submitted to the House, May 6th, 1793, when Mr. Grey delivered his sentiments at considerable length, embodying many of the topics now so familiar to the public, but by no means pursuing the principle to the extent since adopted. The debate lasted till two o'clock in the morning, when it was adjourned to the following day. After a renewed discussion, which continued till four in the morning, the House divided, when the numbers were as follow, viz. Ayes 40, Noes 282.

It is interesting to mark this first commencement of the popular question of Reform (if we except Mr. Pitt's measure, in 1782) and to contrast its slow progress with the final issue, under the same leader, in the year 1832. The minority for several successive years seldom exceeded the amount above specified, though the measure was at length carried by so large a majority.

TO THOMAS PARK, ESQ.

Weston-Underwood, Dec. 17, 1792.

My dear Sir,--You are very kind in thinking it worth while to inquire after so irregular a correspondent. When I had read your last, I persuaded myself that I had answered your obliging letter received while I was at Eartham, and seemed clearly to remember it; but upon better recollection, am inclined to think myself mistaken, and that I have many pardons to ask for neglecting to do it so long.

While I was at Mr. Hayley's I could hardly find opportunity to write to anybody. He is an early riser and breakfasts early, and unless I could rise early enough myself to despatch a letter before breakfast, I had no leisure to do it at all. For immediately after breakfast we repaired to the library, where we studied in concert till noon; and the rest of my time was so occupied by necessary attention to my poor invalid, Mrs. Unwin, and by various other engagements, that to write was impossible.

Since my return, I have been almost constantly afflicted with weak and inflamed eyes, and indeed have wanted spirits as well as leisure. If you can, therefore, you must pardon me; and you will do it perhaps the rather, when I assure you that not you alone, but every person and every thing that had demands upon me has been equally neglected. A strange weariness that has long had dominion over me has indisposed and indeed disqualified me for all employment;[681] and my hindrances besides have been such that I am sadly in arrear in all quarters. A thousand times I have been sorry and ashamed that your MSS. are yet unrevised, and if you knew the compunction that it has cost me, you would pity me: for I feel as if I were guilty in that particular, though my conscience tells me that it could not be otherwise.

[681] This expression alludes to the nervous fever and great depression of spirits that Cowper laboured under, in the months of October and November, and which has been frequently mentioned in the preceding correspondence.

Before I received your letter written from Margate, I had formed a resolution never to be engraven, and was confirmed in it by my friend Hayley's example. But, learning since, though I have not learned it from himself, that my bookseller has an intention to prefix a copy of Abbot's picture of me[682] to the next edition of my poems, at his own expense, if I can be prevailed upon to consent to it; in consideration of the liberality of his behaviour, I have felt my determination shaken. This intelligence, however, comes to me from a third person, and till it reaches me in a direct line from Johnson, I can say nothing to _him_ about it. When he shall open to me his intentions himself, I will not be backward to mention to him your obliging offer, and shall be particularly gratified, if I must be engraved at last, to have that service performed for me by a friend.

[682] There were three portraits of Cowper, taken respectively by Sir Thomas Lawrence, Abbot, and Romney. The reader may be anxious to learn which is entitled to be considered the best resemblance. The editor is able to satisfy this inquiry, on the joint authority of the three most competent witnesses, the late Rev. Dr. Johnson, the present Dowager Lady Throckmorton, and John Higgins, Esq., formerly of Weston. They all agree in assigning the superiority to the portrait by Abbot; and in evidence of this, all have repeated the anecdote mentioned by Cowper, of his dog Beau going up to the picture, and shaking his tail, in token of recognition. It is an exact resemblance of his form, features, manner, and costume. That by Romney was said to resemble him _at the moment it was taken_, but it was his _then_ look, not his customary and more placid features. There is an air of wildness in it, expressive of a disordered mind, and which the shock, produced by the paralytic attack of Mrs. Unwin, was rapidly impressing on his countenance. This portrait has always been considered as awakening distressing emotions in the beholder. The portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence is the most pleasing, but not so exact and faithful a resemblance. There is however a character of peculiar interest in it, and he is represented in the cap which he was accustomed to wear in a morning, presented to him by Lady Hesketh. It was on this picture that the following beautiful lines were composed by the late Rev. Dr. Randolph.

ON SEEING A SKETCH OF COWPER BY LAWRENCE.

Sweet bard! whose mind, thus pictured in thy face, O'er every feature spreads a nobler grace; Whose keen, but softened eye appears to dart A look of pity through the human heart; To search the secrets of man's inward frame, To weep with sorrow o'er his guilt and shame; Sweet bard! with whom, in sympathy of choice, I've ofttimes left the world at Nature's voice, To join the song that all her creatures raise, To carol forth their great Creator's praise; Or, 'rapt in visions of immortal day, Have gazed on Truth in Zion's heavenly way: Sweet Bard!--may this thine image, all I know, Or ever may, of Cowper's form below, Teach one who views it with a Christian's love, To seek and find thee, in the realms above.

I thank you for the anecdote,[683] which could not fail to be very pleasant, and remain, my dear sir, with gratitude and affection,

Yours, W. C.

[683] The Hon. Mrs. Boscawen had expressed her regret that Cowper should employ his time and talents in translation, instead of original composition; accompanied by a wish that he would produce another 'Task,' adverting to what Pope had made his friend exclaim,

"Do write next winter more 'Essays on Man.'"

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, Dec. 26, 1792.

That I may not be silent, till my silence alarms you, I snatch a moment to tell you, that although _toujours triste_ I am not worse than usual, but my opportunities of writing are _paucified_, as, perhaps, Dr. Johnson would have dared to say, and the few that I have are shortened by company.

Give my love to dear Tom, and thank him for his very apposite extract, which I should be happy indeed to turn to any account. How often do I wish, in the course of every day, that I could be employed once more in poetry, and how often, of course, that this Miltonic trap had never caught me! The year ninety-two shall stand chronicled in my remembrance as the most melancholy that I have ever known, except the few weeks that I spent at Eartham; and such it has been principally because, being engaged to Milton, I felt myself no longer free for any other engagement. That ill-fated work, impracticable in itself, has made every thing else impracticable.

... I am very Pindaric, and obliged to be so by the hurry of the hour. My friends are come down to breakfast.

Adieu! W. C.

TO THOMAS PARK, ESQ.

Weston-Underwood, Jan. 3, 1793.

My dear Sir,--A few lines must serve to introduce to you my much-valued friend Mr. Rose, and to thank you for your very obliging attention in sending me so approved a remedy for my disorder. It is no fault of yours, but it will be a disappointment to you to know, that I have long been in possession of that remedy, and have tried it without effect; or, to speak more truly, with an unfavourable one. Judging by the pain it causes, I conclude that it is of the caustic kind, and may, therefore, be sovereign in cases where the eyelids are ulcerated; but mine is a dry inflammation, which it has always increased as often as I have used it. I used it again, after having long since resolved to use it no more, that I might not seem, even to myself, to slight your kindness, but with no better effect than in every former instance.

You are very candid in crediting so readily the excuse I make for not having yet revised your MSS., and as kind in allowing me still longer time. I refer you for a more particular account of the circumstances that make all literary pursuits at present impracticable to me, to the young gentleman who delivers this into your hands.[684] He is perfectly master of the subject, having just left me after having spent a fortnight with us.

[684] Mr. Rose.

You asked me a long time since a question concerning the Olney Hymns, which I do not remember that I have ever answered. Those marked C. are mine, one excepted, which, though it bears that mark, was written by Mr. Newton. I have not the collection at present, and therefore cannot tell you which it is.

You must extend your charity still a little farther, and excuse a short answer to your two obliging letters. I do every thing with my pen in a hurry, but will not conclude without entreating you to make my thanks and best compliments to the lady,[685] who was so good as to trouble herself for my sake to write a character of the medicine.

I remain, my dear sir, Sincerely yours, W. C.

[685] Mrs. Haden, formerly governess to the daughters of Lord Eardley.

Your request does me honour. Johnson will have orders in a few days to send a copy of the edition just published.[686]

[686] The fifth edition of Cowper's Poems.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, Jan. 20, 1793.

My dear Brother,--Now I know that you are safe, I treat you, as you see, with a philosophical indifference, not acknowledging your kind and immediate answer to anxious inquiries, till it suits my own convenience. I have learned, however, from my late solicitude, that not only you, but yours, interest me to a degree, that, should any thing happen to either of you, would be very inconsistent with my peace. Sometimes I thought that you were extremely ill, and once or twice that you were dead. As often some tragedy reached my ear concerning little Tom. "Oh, _vanæ mentes hominum_!" How liable are we to a thousand impositions, and how indebted to honest old Time, who never fails to undeceive us! Whatever you had in prospect, you acted kindly by me not to make me partaker of your expectations; for I have a spirit, if not so sanguine as yours, yet that would have waited for your coming with anxious impatience, and have been dismally mortified by the disappointment. Had you come, and come without notice too, you would not have surprised us more, than (as the matter was managed) we were surprised at the arrival of your picture. It reached us in the evening, after the shutters were closed, at a time when a chaise might actually have brought you without giving us the least previous intimation. Then it was, that Samuel, with his cheerful countenance, appeared at the study door, and with a voice as cheerful as his looks, exclaimed, "Mr. Hayley is come, madam!" We both started, and in the same moment cried, "Mr. Hayley come! And where is he?" The next moment corrected our mistake, and, finding Mary's voice grow suddenly tremulous, I turned and saw her weeping.

I do nothing, notwithstanding all your exhortations: my idleness is proof against them all, or to speak more truly, my difficulties are so. Something indeed I do. I play at pushpin with Homer every morning before breakfast, fingering and polishing, as Paris did his armour. I have lately had a letter from Dublin on that subject, which has pleased me.

W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, Jan. 29, 1793.

My dearest Hayley,--I truly sympathize with you under your weight of sorrow for the loss of our good Samaritan.[687] But be not broken-hearted, my friend! Remember the loss of those we love is the condition on which we live ourselves; and that he who chooses his friends wisely from among the excellent of the earth, has a sure ground to hope concerning them when they die, that a merciful God has made them far happier than they could be here, and that we shall join them soon again. This is solid comfort, could we but avail ourselves of it; but I confess the difficulty of doing so. Sorrow is like the deaf adder, "that hears not the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely;" and I feel so much myself for the death of Austen, that my own chief consolation is, that I had never seen him. Live yourself, I beseech you, for I have seen so much of you that I can by no means spare you, and I will live as long as it shall please God to permit. I know you set some value on me, therefore let that promise comfort you, and give us not reason to say, like David's servant--"We know that it would have pleased thee more if all we had died, than this one, for whom thou art inconsolable." You have still Romney, and Carwardine, and Guy, and me, my poor Mary, and I know not how many beside; as many, I suppose, as ever had an opportunity of spending a day with you. He who has the most friends must necessarily lose the most, and he whose friends are numerous as yours may the better spare a part of them. It is a changing, transient scene: yet a little while, and this poor dream of life will be over with all of us. The living, and they who live unhappy, they are indeed subjects of sorrow.

Adieu! my beloved friend. Ever yours, W. C.

[687] Dr. Austen, who is here alluded to, was not less distinguished for his humane and benevolent qualities, than for his professional skill and eminence.

TO JOHN JOHNSON, ESQ.[688]

[688] Private correspondence.

Jan. 31, 1793. _Io Pæan!_

My dearest Johnny,--Even as you foretold, so it came to pass. On Tuesday I received your letter, and on Tuesday came the pheasants; for which I am indebted in many thanks, as well as Mrs. Unwin, both to your kindness and to your kind friend Mr. Copeman.

In Copeman's ear this truth let Echo tell,-- "Immortal bards like mortal pheasants well:" And when his clerkship's out, I wish him herds Of golden clients for his golden birds.

Our friends the Courtenays have never dined with us since their marriage, _because_ we have never asked them; and we have never asked them, _because_ poor Mrs. Unwin is not so equal to the task of providing for and entertaining company as before this last illness. But this is no objection to the arrival here of a bustard; rather it is a cause for which we shall be particularly glad to see the monster. It will be a handsome present to _them_. So let the bustard come, as the Lord Mayor of London said of the hare, when he was hunting--let her come, a' God's name: I am not afraid of her.

Adieu, my dear cousin and caterer. My eyes are terribly bad; else, I had much more to say to you.

Ever affectionately yours, W. C.

TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ.

Weston, Feb. 5, 1793.

In this last revisal of my work (the Homer) I have made a number of small improvements, and am now more convinced than ever, having exercised a cooler judgment upon it than before I could, that the translation will make its way. There must be time for the conquest of vehement and long-rooted prejudice; but, without much self-partiality, I believe, that the conquest will be made; and am certain that I should be of the same opinion, were the work another man's. I shall soon have finished the Odyssey, and when I have, will send the corrected copy of both to Johnson.

Adieu! W. C.

TO LADY HESKETH.

Weston, Feb. 10, 1793.

My pens are all split, and my ink-glass is dry; Neither wit, common-sense, nor ideas have I.

In vain has it been, that I have made several attempts to write, since I came from Sussex; unless more comfortable days arrive than I have confidence to look for, there is an end of all writing with me. I have no spirits:--when Rose came, I was obliged to prepare for his coming by a nightly dose of laudanum--twelve drops suffice; but without them, I am devoured by melancholy.

A-propos of the Rose! His wife in her political notions is the exact counterpart of yourself--loyal in the extreme. Therefore, if you find her thus inclined, when you become acquainted with her, you must not place her resemblance of yourself to the account of her admiration of you, for she is your likeness ready made. In fact, we are all of one mind about government matters, and notwithstanding your opinion, the Rose is himself a Whig, and I am a Whig, and you, my dear, are a Tory, and all the Tories now-a-days call all the Whigs republicans. How the deuce you came to be a Tory is best known to yourself: you have to answer for this novelty to the shades of your ancestors, who were always Whigs ever since we had any.

Adieu. W. C.

TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ.

Weston, Feb. 17, 1793.

My dear Friend,--I have read the critique of my work in the _Analytical Review_, and am happy to have fallen into the hands of a critic, rigorous enough indeed, but a scholar, and a man of sense, and who does not deliberately intend me mischief. I am better pleased indeed that he censures some things than I should have been with unmixed commendation, for his censure (to use the new diplomatic term) will accredit his praises. In his particular remarks he is for the most part right, and I shall be the better for them; but in his general ones I think he asserts too largely, and more than he could prove. With respect to inversions in particular, I know that they do not abound. Once they did, and I had Milton's example for it, not disapproved by Addison. But on ----'s remonstrance against them, I expunged the most, and in my new edition shall have fewer still. I know that they give dignity, and am sorry to part with them; but, to parody an old proverb, he who lives in the year ninety-three, must do as in the year ninety-three is done by others. The same remark I have to make on his censure of inharmonious lines. I know them to be much fewer than he asserts, and not more in number than I accounted indispensably necessary to a due variation of cadence. I have, however, now, in conformity with modern taste, (over much delicate in my mind,) given to a far greater number of them a flow as smooth as oil. A few I retain, and will, in compliment to my own judgment. He thinks me too faithful to compound epithets in the introductory lines, and I know his reason. He fears lest the English reader should blame Homer, whom he idolizes, though hardly more than I, for such constant repetition. But them I shall not alter. They are necessary to a just representation of the original. In the affair of Outis,[689] I shall throw him flat on his back by an unanswerable argument, which I shall give in a note, and with which I am furnished by Mrs. Unwin. So much for hypercriticism, which has run away with all my paper. This critic, by the way, is ----;[690] I know him by infallible indications.

W. C.

[689] A name given to Ulysses.

[690] Maty.

TO THE REV. MR. HURDIS.

Weston, Feb. 22, 1793.

My dear Sir,--My eyes, which have long been inflamed, will hardly serve for Homer, and oblige me to make all my letters short. You have obliged me much, by sending me so speedily the remainder of your notes. I have begun with them again, and find them, as before, very much to the purpose. More to the purpose they could not have been, had you been poetry professor already. I rejoice sincerely in the prospect you have of that office, which, whatever may be your own thoughts of the matter, I am sure you will fill with great sufficiency. Would that my interest and power to serve you were greater! One string to my bow I have, and one only, which shall not be idle for want of my exertions. I thank you likewise for your very entertaining notices and remarks in the natural way. The hurry in which I write would not suffer me to send you many in return, had I many to send, but only two or three present themselves.

Frogs will feed on worms. I saw a frog gathering into his gullet an earth-worm as long as himself; it cost him time and labour, but at last he succeeded.

Mrs. Unwin and I, crossing a brook, saw from the foot-bridge somewhat at the bottom of the water which had the appearance of a flower. Observing it attentively, we found that it consisted of a circular assemblage of minnows; their heads all met in a centre, and their tails, diverging at equal distances, and being elevated above their heads, gave them the appearance of a flower half blown. One was longer than the rest, and as often as a straggler came in sight, he quitted his place to pursue him, and having driven him away, he returned to it again, and no other minnow offering to take it in his absence. This we saw him do several times. The object that had attached them all was a dead minnow, which they seemed to be devouring.

After a very rainy day, I saw on one of the flower borders what seemed a long hair, but it had a waving, twining motion. Considering more nearly, I found it alive, and endued with spontaneity, but could not discover at the ends of it either head or tail, or any distinction of parts. I carried it into the house, when the air of a warm room dried and killed it presently.

W.C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, Feb. 24, 1793.

Your letter (so full of kindness and so exactly in unison with my own feelings for you) should have had, as it deserved to have, an earlier answer, had I not been perpetually tortured with inflamed eyes, which are a sad hindrance to me in everything. But, to make amends, if I do not send you an early answer, I send you at least a speedy one, being obliged to write as fast as my pen can trot, that I may shorten the time of poring upon paper as much as possible. Homer too has been another hindrance, for always when I can see, which is only about two hours every morning, and not at all by candle-light, I devote myself to him, being in haste to send him a second time to the press, that nothing may stand in the way of Milton. By the way, where are my dear Tom's remarks, which I long to have, and must have soon, or they will come too late?

Oh, you rogue! what would you give to have such a dream about Milton as I had about a week since? I dreamed that, being in a house in the city, and with much company, looking towards the lower end of the room from the upper end of it, I descried a figure which I immediately knew to be Milton's. He was very gravely but very neatly attired in the fashion of his day, and had a countenance which filled me with those feelings that an affectionate child has for a beloved father,--such, for instance, as Tom has for you. My first thought was wonder, where he could have been concealed so many years; my second, a transport of joy to find him still alive; my third, another transport to find myself in his company; and my fourth, a resolution to accost him. I did so, and he received me with a complacence in which I saw equal sweetness and dignity. I spoke of his Paradise Lost as every man must who is worthy to speak of it at all, and told him a long story of the manner in which it affected me when I first discovered it, being at that time a school-boy. He answered me by a smile, and a gentle inclination of his head. He then grasped my hand affectionately, and with a smile that charmed me, said, "Well, you for your part will do well also;" at last, recollecting his great age (for I understood him to be two hundred years old) I feared that I might fatigue him by much talking, I took my leave, and he took his with an air of the most perfect good-breeding. His person, his features, his manner, were all so perfectly characteristic, that I am persuaded an apparition of him could not represent him more completely. This may be said to have been one of the dreams of Pindus, may it not?[691]

[691] Whether this is a poetical or real dream of Cowper's, we presume not to decide. It bears so strong a resemblance to Milton's vision of the Bishop of Winchester, (the celebrated Dr. Andrews,) as to suggest the probability of having been borrowed from that source. The passage is to be found in Milton's beautiful Latin elegy on the death of that prelate, and is thus translated by Cowper:

"While I that splendour, and the mingled shade Of fruitful vines with wonder fixt survey'd, At once, with looks, that beam'd celestial grace, The seer of Winton stood before my face. His snowy vesture's hem descending low His golden sandals swept, and pure as snow New-fallen shone the mitre on his brow. Where'er he trod a tremulous sweet sound Of gladness shook the flow'ry scene around: Attendant angels clap their starry wings, The trumpet shakes the sky, all æther rings, Each chaunts his welcome, ... Then night retired, and, chas'd by dawning day, The visionary bliss pass'd all away: I mourn'd my banish'd sleep with fond concern, Frequent to me may dreams like this return."

How truly I rejoice that you have recovered Guy! That man won my heart the moment I saw him: give my love to him, and tell him I am truly glad he is alive again.

There is much sweetness in those lines from the sonneteer of Avon, and not a little in dear Tom's: an earnest, I trust, of good things to come!

With Mary's kind love, I must now conclude myself, My dear brother, ever yours,

LIPPUS.

TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT.

Weston, March 4, 1793.

My dear Friend,--Since I received your last I have been much indisposed, very blind, and very busy. But I have not suffered all these evils at one and the same time. While the winter lasted I was miserable with a fever on my spirits; when the spring began to approach I was seized with an inflammation in my eyes, and ever since I have been able to use them, have been employed in giving more last touches to Homer, who is on the point of going to the press again.

Though you are Tory, I believe, and I am Whig, our sentiments concerning the madcaps of France are much the same. They are a terrible race, and I have a horror both of them and their principles.[692] Tacitus is certainly living now, and the quotations you sent me can be nothing but extracts from some letters of his to yourself.

Yours, most sincerely, W. C.

[692] Louis XVI. the unhappy King of France, had recently perished on the scaffold, Jan. 21, 1793.

* * * * *

We have already mentioned the interest excited in Cowper's mind by a son of Hayley's, a youth of not more than twelve years of age, and of most promising talents. At Cowper's request he addressed to him the subjoined letter, containing criticisms on his Homer, which do honour to his taste and acuteness. The poet's reply may also be regarded as a proof of his kind condescension and amiable sweetness of temper.

TO WILLIAM COWPER, ESQ.

Eartham, March 4, 1793.

Honoured King of Bards,--Since you deign to demand the observations of an humble and inexperienced servant of yours, on a work of one who is so much his superior (as he is ever ready to serve you with all his might), behold what you demand! But let me desire you not to censure me for my unskilful and perhaps (as they will undoubtedly appear to you) ridiculous observations; but be so kind as to receive them as a mark of respectful affection from

Your obedient servant, THOMAS HAYLEY.

Book. Line.

I. 184 I cannot reconcile myself to these 195 expressions, "Ah cloth'd with impudence," &c., and "Shameless 196 wolf," and "Face of flint." I. 508 "Dishonoured foul," is, in my opinion, an uncleanly expression. I. 651 "Reel'd," I think makes it appear as if Olympus was drunk. I. 749 "Kindler of the fires of Heaven," I think makes Jupiter appear too much like a lamp-lighter. II. 317 These lines are, in my opinion, below to 319 the elevated genius of Mr. Cowper. XVIII. 300 This appears to me to be rather Irish, since in line 300 you say, "No one sat," and in line 304, "Polydamas rose."

TO MR. THOMAS HAYLEY.

Weston, March 14, 1793.

My dear little Critic,--I thank you heartily for your observations, on which I set a higher value, because they have instructed me as much, and have entertained me more, than all the other strictures of our public judges in these matters. Perhaps I am not much more pleased with _shameless wolf_, &c., than you. But what is to be done, my little man? Coarse as the expressions are, they are no more than equivalent to those of Homer. The invective of the ancients was never tempered with good manners, as your papa can tell you; and my business, you know, is not to be more polite than my author, but to represent him as closely as I can.

_Dishonour'd foul_ I have wiped away, for the reason you give, which is a very just one, and the present reading is this,

Who had dared dishonour thus The life itself, &c.

Your objection to _kindler of the fires of heaven_ I had the good fortune to anticipate, and expunged the dirty ambiguity some time since, wondering not a little that I had ever admitted it.

The fault you find with the two first verses of Nestor's speech discovers such a degree of just discernment that, but for your papa's assurance to the contrary, I must have suspected _him_ as the author of that remark: much as I should have respected it, if it had been so, I value it, I assure you, my little friend, still more as yours. In the new edition the passage will be found thus altered:

Alas! great sorrow falls on Greece to-day! Priam, and Priam's sons, with all in Troy-- Oh! how will they exult, and in their hearts Triumph, once hearing of this broil between The prime of Greece, in council and in arms!

Where the word _reel_ suggests to you the idea of a drunken mountain, it performs the service to which I destined it. It is a bold metaphor; but justified by one of the sublimest passages in scripture, compared with the sublimity of which even that of Homer suffers humiliation.

It is God himself who, speaking, I think, by the prophet Isaiah, says,

"The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard."[693]

[693] Isaiah xxiv. 20.

With equal boldness in the same scripture, the poetry of which was never equalled, mountains are said to skip, to break out into singing, and the fields to clap their hands. I intend, therefore, that my Olympus shall be still tipsy.

The accuracy of your last remark, in which you convicted me of a bull, delights me. A fig for all critics but you! The blockheads could not find it. It shall stand thus:--

First spake Polydamus----

Homer was more upon his guard than to commit such a blunder, for he says,

ηρχ' αγορευειν.

And now, my dear little censor, once more accept my thanks. I only regret that your strictures are so few, being just and sensible as they are.

Tell your papa that he shall hear from me soon. Accept mine and my dear invalid's affectionate remembrances.

Ever yours, W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, March 19, 1793.

My dear Hayley,--I am so busy every morning before breakfast (my only opportunity), strutting and stalking in Homeric stilts, that you ought to account it an instance of marvellous grace and favour, that I condescend to write even to you. Sometimes I am seriously almost crazed with the multiplicity of the matters before me, and the little or no time that I have for them; and sometimes I repose myself, after the fatigue of that distraction, on the pillow of despair: a pillow which has often served me in the time of need, and is become, by frequent use, if not very comfortable, at least convenient. So reposed, I laugh at the world, and say, "Yes, you may gape and expect both Homer and Milton from me, but I'll be hanged if ever you get them."

In Homer you must know I am advanced as far as the fifteenth book of the Iliad, leaving nothing behind me that can reasonably offend the most fastidious: and I design him for public appearance in his new dress as soon as possible, for a reason which any poet may guess, if he will but thrust his hand into his pocket.

You forbid me to tantalize you with an invitation to Weston, and yet you invite me to Eartham! No! no! there is no such happiness in store for me at present. Had I rambled at all, I was under promise to all my dear mother's kindred to go to Norfolk, and they are dying to see me; but I have told them that die they must, for I cannot go; and ergo, as you will perceive, can go nowhere else.

Thanks for Mazarin's epitaph![694] It is full of witty paradox, and is written with a force and severity which sufficiently bespeak the author. I account it an inestimable curiosity, and shall be happy when time shall serve, with your aid, to make a good translation of it. But that will be a stubborn business. Adieu! The clock striks eight: and now for Homer.

W. C.

[694] We have not been able to discover this epitaph, nor does it appear that it was ever translated by Cowper.

Cardinal Mazarin was minister of state to Louis XIII. and during the minority of Louis XIV. The last moments of this great statesman are too edifying not to be recorded. To the ecclesiastic (Joly) who attended him, he said, "I am not satisfied with my state; I wish to feel a more profound sorrow for my sins. I am a great sinner. I have no hope but in the mercy of God." (Je suis un grand criminel, je n'ai d'esperance qu'en la misericorde divine.) At another time he besought his confessor to treat him like the lowest subject in the realm, being convinced, he said, that there was but one gospel for the great, as well as for the little. (Qu'il n'y avait qu'un Evangile pour les grands, et pour les petits.) His sufferings were very acute. "You see," he observed to those around him, "what infirmities and wretchedness the fortunes and dignities of this world come to." He repeated many times the Miserere, (Ps. li.) stretching forth his hands, then clasping them, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, with all the marks of the most sincere devotion.

At midnight he exclaimed, "I am dying--my mind grows indistinct. I trust in Jesus Christ." (Je vais bientôt mourir, mon jugement se trouble, j'espère en Jésus Christ.) Afterwards, frequently repeating the sacred name of Jesus, he expired. (Se mettant en devoir de répéter aussi fréquemment le très-saint nom de Jésus, il expira.)

_Histoire du Card. Mazarin, par M. Aubery._

* * * * *

The two following letters bear an honourable testimony to his bookseller, Johnson, whom he had commissioned his friend, Mr. Rose, to consult respecting a second and revised edition of his Homeric version.

TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ.

Weston, March 27, 1793.

My dear Friend,--I must send you a line of congratulation on the event of your transaction with Johnson, since you, I know, partake with me in the pleasure I receive from it. Few of my concerns have been so happily concluded. I am now satisfied with my bookseller, as I have substantial cause to be, and account myself in good hands; a circumstance as pleasant to me as any other part of my business; for I love dearly to be able to confide, with all my heart, in those with whom I am connected, of what kind soever the connexion may be.

The question of printing or not printing the alterations seems difficult to decide. If they are not printed, I shall perhaps disoblige some purchasers of the first edition, and if they are, many others of them, perhaps a great majority will never care about them. As far as I have gone, I have made a fair copy; and when I have finished the whole, will send them to Johnson, together with the interleaved volumes. He will see in a few minutes what it will be best to do, and by his judgment I shall be determined. The opinion to which I most incline is, that they ought to be printed separately, for they are many of them rather long, here and there a whole speech, or a whole simile, and the verbal and lineal variations are so numerous, that altogether, I apprehend, they will give a new air to the work, and I hope a much improved one.

I forgot to say in the proper place, that some notes, although but very few, I have added already; and may perhaps see here and there opportunity for a few more. But, notes being little wanted, especially by people at all conversant with classical literature, as most readers of Homer are, I am persuaded that were they numerous, they would be deemed an incumbrance. I shall write to Johnson soon, perhaps to-morrow, and then shall say the same thing to him.

In point of health, we continue much the same. Our united love, and many thanks for your prosperous negotiations, attend yourself and whole family, and especially my little namesake. Adieu!

W. C.

TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.[695]

[695] Private correspondence.

Weston, March 29, 1793.

My dear Friend,--Your tidings concerning the slender pittance yet to come are, as you observe, of the melancholy cast. Not being gifted by nature with the means of acquiring much, it is well, however, that she has given me a disposition to be contented with little. I have now been so many years habituated to small matters, that I should probably find myself incommoded by greater; and may I but be enabled to shift, as I have been hitherto, unsatisfied wishes will never trouble me much. My pen has helped me somewhat; and, after some years' toil, I begin to reap the benefit. Had I begun sooner, perhaps I should have known fewer pecuniary distresses; or, who can say?--it is possible that I might not have succeeded so well. Fruit ripens only a short time before it rots; and man, in general, arrives not at maturity of mental powers at a much earlier period. I am now busied in preparing Homer for his second appearance. An author should consider himself as bound not to please himself, but the public; and as far as the good pleasure of the public may be learned from the critics, I design to accommodate myself to it. The Latinisms, though employed by Milton, and numbered by Addison among the arts and expedients by which he has given dignity to his style, I shall render into plain English; the rougher lines, though my reason for using them has never been proved a bad one, so far as I know, I shall make perfectly smooth; and shall give body and substance to all that is in any degree feeble and flimsy. And when I have done all this, and more, if the critics still grumble, I shall say the very deuce is in them. Yet, that they will grumble, I make no doubt; for, unreasonable as it is to do so, they all require something better than Homer, and that something they will certainly never get from me.

As to the canal that is to be my neighbour, I hear little about it. The Courtenays of Weston have nothing to do with it, and I have no intercourse with Tyringham. When it is finished, the people of these parts will have to carry their coals seven miles only, which now they bring from Northampton or Bedford, both at the distance of fifteen. But, as Balaam says, who shall live when these things are done? It is not for me, a sexagenarian already, to expect that I shall. The chief objection to canals in general seems to be, that, multiplying as they do, they are likely to swallow the coasting trade.

I cannot tell you the joy I feel at the disappointment of the French: pitiful mimics of Spartan and Roman virtue, without a grain of it in their whole character.

Ever yours, W. C.

TO JOHN JOHNSON, ESQ.

Weston, April 11, 1793.

My dearest Johnny,--The long muster-roll of my great and small ancestors I signed and dated, and sent up to Mr. Blue-mantle, on Monday, according to your desire. Such a pompous affair, drawn out for my sake, reminds me of the old fable of the mountain in parturition, and a mouse the produce. Rest undisturbed, say I, their lordly, ducal, and royal dust! Had they left me something handsome, I should have respected them more. But perhaps they did not know that such a one as I should have the honour to be numbered among their descendants.[696] Well! I have a little bookseller that makes me some amends for their deficiency. He has made me a present; an act of liberality which I take every opportunity to blazon, as it well deserves. But you, I suppose, have learned it already from Mr. Rose.

[696] Cowper, according to his kinsman, was descended, by the maternal line, through the families of Hippesley of Throughley, in Sussex, and Pellet, of Bolney, in the same county, from the several noble houses of West, Knollys, Carey, Bullen, Howard, and Mowbray; and so by four different lines from Henry the Third, king of England. He justly adds, "Distinction of this nature can shed no additional lustre on the memory of Cowper; but genius, however exalted, disdains not, while it boasts not, the splendour of ancestry; and royalty itself may be flattered, and perhaps benefited, by discovering its kindred to such piety, such purity, such talents as his."--_See Sketch of the Life of Cowper, by Dr. Johnson._

Fear not, my man. You will acquit yourself very well, I dare say, both in standing for your degree, and when you have gained it. A little tremor and a little shame-facedness in a stripling like you, are recommendations rather than otherwise; and so they ought to be, being symptoms of an ingenuous mind, rather unfrequent in this age of brass.

What you say of your determined purpose, with God's help, to take up the cross and despise the shame, gives us both real pleasure. In our pedigree is found one, at least, who did it before you.[697] Do you the like; and you will meet him in heaven, as sure as the scripture is the word of God.[698]

[697] Dr. Donne, formerly Dean of St. Paul's.

[698]

"Be wiser thou--like our forefather Donne, Seek heavenly wealth, and work for God alone."

The quarrel that the world has with evangelic men and doctrines, they would have with a host of angels in the human form. For it is the quarrel of owls with sunshine; of ignorance with divine illumination.

Adieu, my dear Johnny! We shall expect you with earnest desire of your coming, and receive you with much delight.

W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Western, April 23, 1793.

My dear Friend and Brother,--Better late than never, and better a little than none at all! Had I been at liberty to consult my inclinations, I would have answered your truly kind and affectionate letter immediately. But I am the busiest man alive, and, when this epistle is despatched, you will be the only one of my correspondents to whom I shall not be indebted. While I write this, my poor Mary sits mute; which I cannot well bear, and which, together with want of time to write much, will have a curtailing effect on my epistle.

My only studying time is still given to Homer, not to correction and amendment of him (for that is all over) but to writing notes. Johnson has expressed a wish for some, that the unlearned may be a little illuminated concerning classical story and the mythology of the ancients; and his behaviour to me has been so liberal, that I can refuse him nothing. Poking into the old Greek commentators blinds me. But it is no matter. I am the more like Homer.

Ever yours, my dearest Hayley, W. C.

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.[699]

[699] Private correspondence.

April 25, 1793.

My dear Friend,--Had it not been stipulated between us that, being both at present pretty much engrossed by business, we should write when opportunity offers, I should be frighted at the date of your last: but you will not judge me, I know, by the unfrequency of my letters; nor suppose that my thoughts about you are equally unfrequent. In truth, they are not. No day passes in which you are excluded from them. I am so busy that I do not expect even now to fill my paper. While I write, my poor invalid, who is still unable to amuse herself either with book or needle, sits silent at my side; which makes me, in all my letters, hasten to a conclusion. My only time for study is now before breakfast; and I lengthen it as much as I can, by rising early.

I know not that, with respect to our health, we are either better or worse than when you saw us. Mrs. Unwin, perhaps, has gained a little strength; and the advancing spring, I hope, will add to it. As to myself, I am, in body, soul, and spirit, _semper idem_. Prayer, I know, is made for me, and sometimes with great enlargement of heart, by those who offer it: and in this circumstance consists the only evidence I can find, that God is still favourably mindful of me, and has not cast me off for ever.

A long time since, I received a parcel from Dr. Cogshall, of New York; and, looking on the reverse of the packing-paper, saw there an address to you. I conclude, therefore, that you received it first, and at his desire transmitted it to me; consequently you are acquainted with him, and, probably, apprised of the nature of our correspondence. About three years ago I had his first letter to me, which came accompanied by half a dozen American publications. He proposed an exchange of books on religious subjects, as likely to be useful on both sides of the water. Most of those he sent, however, I had seen before. I sent him, in return, such as I could get; but felt myself indifferently qualified for such a negotiation. I am now called upon to contribute my quota again; and shall be obliged to you if, in your next, you will mention the titles of half a dozen that may be procured at little cost, that are likely to be new in that country, and useful.

About two months since, I had a letter from Mr. Jeremiah Waring, of Alton in Hampshire. Do you know such a man? I think I have seen his name in advertisements of mathematical works. He is, however, or seems to be, a very pious man.

I was a little surprised lately, seeing in the last Gentleman's Magazine a letter from somebody at Winchester, in which is a copy of the epitaph of our poor friend Unwin: an English, not a Latin one. It has been pleasant to me sometimes to think, that his dust lay under an inscription of my writing; which I had no reason to doubt, because the Latin one, which I composed at the request of the executors, was, as I understood from Mr. H. Thornton, accepted by them and approved. If they thought, after all, that an English one, as more intelligible, would therefore be preferable, I believe they judged wisely; but, having never heard that they had changed their mind about it, I was at a loss to account for the alteration.

So now, my dear friend, adieu!--When I have thanked you for a barrel of oysters, and added our united kind remembrances to yourself and Miss Catlett, I shall have exhausted the last moment that I can spare at present.

I remain sincerely yours, W. C.

TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT.

Weston, May 4, 1793.

My dear Friend,--While your sorrow for our common loss was fresh in your mind, I would not write, lest a letter on so distressing a subject should be too painful both to you and me; and now that I seem to have reached a proper time for doing it, the multiplicity of my literary business will hardly afford me leisure. Both you and I have this comfort when deprived of those we love--at our time of life we have every reason to believe that the deprivation cannot be long. Our sun is setting too, and when the hour of rest arrives we shall rejoin your brother, and many whom we have tenderly loved, our forerunners into a better country.

I will say no more on a theme which it will be better perhaps to treat with brevity; and because the introduction of any other might seem a transition too violent, I will only add that Mrs. Unwin and I are about as well as we at any time have been within the last year.

Truly yours, W. C.

TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ.

May 5, 1793.

My dear Friend,--My delay to answer your last kind letter, to which likewise you desired a speedy reply, must have seemed rather difficult to explain on any other supposition than that of illness; but illness has not been the cause, although, to say the truth, I cannot boast of having been lately very well. Yet has not this been the cause of my silence, but your own advice, very proper and earnestly given to me, to proceed in the revisal of Homer. To this it is owing, that, instead of giving an hour or two before breakfast to my correspondents, I allot that time entirely to my studies. I have nearly given the last touches to the poetry, and am now busied far more laboriously in writing notes at the request of my honest bookseller, transmitted to me in the first instance by you, and afterward repeated by himself. I am, therefore, deep in the old Scholia, and have advanced to the latter part of Iliad nine, explaining, as I go, such passages as may be difficult to unlearned readers, and such only; for notes of that kind are the notes that Johnson desired. I find it a more laborious task than the translation was, and shall be heartily glad when it is over. In the meantime, all the letters I receive remain unanswered, or, if they receive an answer, it is always a short one. Such this must be. Johnny is here, having flown over London.

Homer, I believe, will make a much more respectable appearance than before. Johnson now thinks it will be right to make a separate impression of the amendments.

W. C.

I breakfast every morning on seven or eight pages of the Greek commentators. For so much I am obliged to read in order to select perhaps three or four short notes for the readers of my translation.

Homer is indeed a tie upon me, that must not on any account be broken, till all his demands are satisfied; though I have fancied, while the revisal of the Odyssey was at a distance, that it would ask less labour in the finishing, it is not unlikely, that, when I take it actually in hand, I may find myself mistaken. Of this at least I am sure, that uneven verse abounds much more in it than it once did in the Iliad; yet to the latter the critics objected on that account, though to the former never; perhaps because they had not read it. Hereafter they shall not quarrel with me on that score. The Iliad is now all smooth turnpike, and I will take equal care, that there shall be no jolts in the Odyssey.

TO LADY HESKETH.

The Lodge, May 7, 1793.

My dearest Coz,--You have thought me long silent, and so have many others. In fact I have not for many months written punctually to any but yourself and Hayley. My time, the little I have, is so engrossed by Homer, that I have at this moment a bundle of unanswered letters by me, and letters likely to be so. Thou knowest, I dare say, what it is to have a head weary with thinking. Mine is so fatigued by breakfast time, three days out of four, I am utterly incapable of sitting down to my desk again for any purpose whatever.

I am glad I have convinced thee at last that thou art a Tory. Your friend's definition of Whig and Tory must be just, for aught I know, as far as the latter are concerned; but respecting the former, I think him mistaken. There is no TRUE Whig who wishes all power in the hands of his own party. The division of it which the lawyers call tripartite is exactly what he desires; and he would have neither king, lords, nor commons unequally trusted, or in the smallest degree predominant. Such a Whig am I, and such Whigs are the true friends of the constitution.

Adieu! my dear; I am dead with weariness.

W. C.

TO THOMAS PARK ESQ.

May 17, 1793.

Dear Sir,--It has not been without frequent self-reproach that I have so long omitted to answer your last very kind and most obliging letter. I am by habit and inclination extremely punctual in the discharge of such arrears, and it is only through necessity, and under constraint of various indispensable engagements of a different kind, that I am become of late much otherwise.

I have never seen Chapman's translation of Homer, and will not refuse your offer of it, unless, by accepting it, I shall deprive you of a curiosity that you cannot easily replace.[700] The line or two which you quote from him, except that the expression "a well-written soul" has the quaintness of his times in it, do him credit. He cannot surely be the same Chapman who wrote a poem, I think, on the battle of Hochstadt, in which, when I was a very young man, I remember to have seen the following lines:

"Think of two thousand gentlemen at least, And each man mounted on his capering beast. Into the Danube they were push'd by shoals," &c.

[700] Chapman claims the honour of being the first translator of the whole of the works of Homer. He was born in 1557, and was the contemporary of Shakspeare, Spenser, Jonson, &c. His version of the Iliad was dedicated to Henry, Prince of Wales. He also translated Musæus and Hesiod, and was the author of many other works. He died in 1634, aged seventy-seven. His version of Homer is now obsolete, and rendered tedious by the protracted measure of fourteen syllables; though occasionally it exhibits much spirit. Waller, according to Dryden, could never read his version without emotion, and Pope found it worthy of his particular attention.

These are lines that could not fail to impress the memory, though not altogether in the Homerican style of battle.

I am, as you say, a hermit, and probably an irreclaimable one, having a horror of London that I cannot express, nor indeed very easily account for. Neither am I much less disinclined to migration in general. I did no little violence to my love of home last summer, when I paid Mr. Hayley a visit, and in truth was principally induced to the journey by a hope that it might be useful to Mrs. Unwin; who, however, derived so little benefit from it, that I purpose for the future to avail myself of the privilege my years may reasonably claim, by compelling my younger friends to visit _me_. But even this is a point which I cannot well compass at present, both because I am too busy, and because poor Mrs. Unwin is not able to bear the fatigue of company. Should better days arrive, days of more leisure to me, and of some health to her, I shall not fail to give you notice of the change, and shall then hope for the pleasure of seeing you at Weston.

The epitaph you saw is on the tomb of the same Mr. Unwin to whom the "Tirocinium" is inscribed; the son of the lady above mentioned. By the desire of his executors I wrote a Latin one, which they approved, but it was not approved by a relation of the deceased, and therefore was not used. He objected to the mention I had made in it of his mother having devoted him to the service of God in his infancy. She did it, however, and not in vain, as I wrote in my epitaph. Who wrote the English one I know not.

The poem called the "Slave" is not mine, nor have I ever seen it. I wrote two on the subject--one entitled "The Negro's Complaint," and the other "The Morning Dream." With thanks for all your kindness, and the patience you have with me,

I remain, dear sir, Sincerely yours, W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, May 21, 1793.

My dear Brother,--You must either think me extremely idle, or extremely busy, that I have made your last very kind letter wait so very long for an answer. The truth however is, that I am neither; but have had time enough to have scribbled to you, had I been able to scribble at all. To explain this riddle I must give you a short account of my proceedings.

I rise at six every morning and fag till near eleven, when I breakfast. The consequence is, that I am so exhausted as not to be able to write, when the opportunity offers. You will say--"Breakfast before you work, and then your work will not fatigue you." I answer--"Perhaps I might, and your counsel would probably prove beneficial; but I cannot spare a moment for eating in the early part of the morning, having no other time for study." This uneasiness of which I complain is a proof that I am somewhat stricken in years; and there is no other cause by which I can account for it, since I go early to bed, always between ten and eleven, and seldom fail to sleep well. Certain it is, ten years ago I could have done as much, and sixteen years ago did actually much more, without suffering fatigue or any inconvenience from my labours. How insensibly old age steals on, and how often is it actually arrived before we suspect it! Accident alone, some occurrence that suggests a comparison of our former with our present selves, affords the discovery. Well! it is always good to be undeceived, especially on an article of such importance.

There has been a book lately published, entitled, "Man as he is." I have heard a high character of it, as admirably written, and am informed, that for that reason, and because it inculcates Whig principles, it is by many imputed to you. I contradict this report, assuring my informant, that had it been yours, I must have known it, for that you have bound yourself to make me your father-confessor on all such wicked occasions, and not to conceal from me even a murder, should you happen to commit one.[701]

[701] The real author was Robert Bage.

I will not trouble you, at present, to send me any more books with a view to my notes on Homer. I am not without hopes that Sir John Throckmorton, who is expected here from Venice in a short time, may bring me Villoison's edition of the Odyssey. He certainly will, if he found it published, and that alone will be _instar omnium_.

Adieu, my dearest brother! Give my love to Tom, and thank him for his book, of which I believe I need not have deprived him, intending that my readers shall detect the occult instruction contained in Homer's stories for themselves.

W. C.

TO LADY HESKETH.

Weston, June 1, 1793.

My dearest Cousin,--You will not (you say) come to us now; and you tell us not when you will. These assignations, _sine die_, are such shadowy things that I can neither grasp nor get any comfort from them. Know you not that hope is the next best thing to enjoyment? Give us then a hope, and a determinate time for that hope to fix on, and we will endeavour to be satisfied.

Johnny is gone to Cambridge, called thither to take his degree, and is much missed by me. He is such an active little fellow in my service, that he cannot be otherwise. In three weeks, however, I shall hope to have him again for a fortnight. I have had a letter from him, containing an incident which has given birth to the following.

TO A YOUNG FRIEND,[702]

ON HIS ARRIVAL AT CAMBRIDGE WET, WHEN NO RAIN HAD FALLEN THERE.

[702] The Poet's kinsman.

If Gideon's fleece, which drench'd with dew he found, While moisture none refreshed the herbs around, Might fitly represent the Church, endow'd With heavenly gifts, to heathens not allow'd; In pledge, perhaps, of favours from on high, Thy locks were wet, when other locks were dry. Heav'n grant us half the omen! may we see, Not drought on others, but much dew on thee!

These are spick and span. Johnny himself has not yet seen them. By the way, he has filled your book completely; and I will give thee a guinea if thou wilt search thy old book for a couple of songs and two or three other pieces, of which I know thou madest copies at the vicarage, and which I have lost. The songs I know are pretty good, and I would fain recover them.

W. C.

TO THE REV. MR. HURDIS.

Weston, June 6, 1793.

My dear Sir,--I seize a passing moment merely to say that I feel for your distresses, and sincerely pity you, and I shall be happy to learn from your next, that your sister's amendment has superseded the necessity you feared of a journey to London. Your candid account of the effect that your afflictions have both on your spirits and temper I can perfectly understand, having laboured much in that fire myself, and perhaps more than any man. It is in such a school, however, that we must learn, if we ever truly learn it, the natural depravity of the human heart, and of our own in particular; together with the consequence that necessarily follows such wretched premises; our indispensable need of the atonement, and our inexpressible obligations to Him who made it. This reflection cannot escape a thinking mind, looking back on those ebullitions of fretfulness and impatience to which it has yielded in a season of great affliction.

Having lately had company, who left us only on the 4th, I have done nothing--nothing indeed, since my return from Sussex, except a trifle or two, which it was incumbent upon me to write. Milton hangs in doubt: neither spirits nor opportunity suffice me for that labour. I regret continually that I ever suffered myself to be persuaded to undertake it. The most that I hope to effect is a complete revisal of my own Homer. Johnson told my friend, who has just left me, that it will begin to be reviewed in the next _Analytical_, and he _hoped_ the review of it would not offend me. By this I understand, that if I am not offended it will be owing more to my own equanimity than to the mildness of the critic. So be it! He will put an opportunity of victory over myself into my hands, and I will endeavour not to lose it.

Adieu! W. C.

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.[703]

[703] Private correspondence.

June 12, 1793.

My dear Friend,--You promise to be contented with a short line, and a short one you must have, hurried over in the little interval I have happened to find between the conclusion of my morning task and breakfast. Study has this good effect, at least; it makes me an early riser, who might otherwise, perhaps, be as much given to dozing as my readers.

The scanty opportunity I have, I shall employ in telling you what you principally wish to be told--the present state of mine and Mrs. Unwin's health. In her I cannot perceive any alteration for the better; and must be satisfied, I believe, as indeed I have great reason to be, if she does not alter for the worse. She uses the orchard-walk daily, but always supported between two, and is still unable to employ herself as formerly. But she is cheerful, seldom in much pain, and has always strong confidence in the mercy and faithfulness of God.

As to myself, I have always the same song to sing--Well in body but sick in spirit: sick, nigh unto death.

Seasons return, but not to me returns God, or the sweet approach of heavenly day, Or sight of cheering truth, or pardon seal'd, Or joy, or hope, or Jesus' face divine; But cloud, &c.

I could easily set my complaint to Milton's tone, and accompany him through the whole passage,[704] on the subject of a blindness more deplorable than his; but time fails me.

[704] Paradise Lost, Book iii.

I feel great desire to see your intended publication; a desire which the manner in which Mr. Bull speaks of it, who called here lately, has no tendency to allay. I believe I forgot to thank you for your last poetical present: not because I was not much pleased with it, but I write always in a hurry, and in a hurry must now conclude myself, with our united love,

Yours, my dear friend, Most sincerely, W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, June 29, 1793.

Dear architect of fine CHATEAUX in air Worthier to stand for ever if they could, Than any built of stone, or yet of wood, For back of royal elephant to bear!

Oh for permission from the skies to share, Much to my own, though little to thy good, With thee (not subject to the jealous mood!) A partnership of literary ware.

But I am bankrupt now; and doom'd henceforth To drudge, in descant dry,[705] on others' lays; Bards, I acknowledge, of unequall'd worth! But what is commentator's happiest praise?

That he has furnish'd lights for other eyes, Which they who need them use, and then despise.

[705] He alludes to his notes on Homer.

What remains for me to say on this subject, my dear brother bard, I will say in prose. There are other impediments which I could not compromise within the bounds of a sonnet.

My poor Mary's infirm condition makes it impossible for me, at present, to engage in a work such as you propose. My thoughts are not sufficiently free, nor have I, or can I, by any means, find opportunity; added to it comes a difficulty which, though you are not at all aware of it, presents itself to me under a most forbidding appearance. Can you guess it? No, not you; neither perhaps will you be able to imagine that such a difficulty can possibly subsist. If your hair begins to bristle, stroke it down again, for there is no need why it should erect itself. It concerns me, not you. I know myself too well not to know that I am nobody in verse, unless in a corner, and alone, and unconnected in my operations. This is not owing to want of love for you, my brother, or the most consummate confidence in you; for I have both in a degree that has not been exceeded in the experience of any friend you have, or ever had. But I am so made up--I will not enter into a metaphysical analysis of my strange composition, in order to detect the true cause of this evil; but on a general view of the matter, I suspect that it proceeds from that shyness which has been my effectual and almost fatal hindrance on many other important occasions, and which I should feel, I well know, on this, to a degree that would perfectly cripple me. No! I shall neither do, nor attempt any thing of consequence more, unless my poor Mary get better; nor even then, unless it should please God to give me another nature, in concert with any man--I could not, even with my own father or brother, were they now alive. Small game must serve me at present, and, till I have done with Homer and Milton, a sonnet, or some such matter, must content me. The utmost that I aspire to, and Heaven knows with how feeble a hope, is to write at some better opportunity, and when my hands are free, "The Four Ages." Thus I have opened my heart unto thee.[706]

W. C.

[706] What the proposed literary partnership was, which Hayley suggested, we know not; it is evident that it was not the poem of "The Four Ages," which forms the subject of the following letter, and in which Cowper acquiesced.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, July 7, 1793.

My dearest Hayley,--If the excessive heat of this day, which forbids me to do any thing else, will permit me to scribble to you, I shall rejoice. To do this is a pleasure to me at all times, but to do it now, a double one; because I am in haste to tell you how much I am delighted with your projected quadruple alliance, and to assure you, that if it please God to afford me health, spirits, ability, and leisure, I will not fail to devote them all to the production of my quota of "The Four Ages."[707]

[707] Hayley made a second proposition to unite with Cowper in the projected poem of "The Four Ages," and to engage the aid of two distinguished artists, who were to embellish the work with appropriate designs. We believe that Lawrence and Flaxman were the persons to whom Hayley refers. We cannot sufficiently regret the failure of this plan, which would have enriched literature and art with so happy a specimen of poetical and professional talent. But the period was unhappily approaching which was to suspend the fine powers of Cowper's mind, and to shroud them in the veil of darkness.

You are very kind to humour me as you do, and had need be a little touched yourself with all my oddities, that you may know how to administer to mine. All whom I love do so, and I believe it to be impossible to love heartily those who do not. People must not do me good in _their_ way, but in my _own_, and then they do me good indeed. My pride, my ambition, and my friendship for you, and the interest I take in my own dear self, will all be consulted and gratified by an arm-in-arm appearance with you in public; and I shall work with more zeal and assiduity at Homer, and, when Homer is finished, at Milton, with the prospect of such a coalition before me. But what shall I do with a multitude of small pieces, from which I intended to select the best, and adding them to "The Four Ages," to have made a volume? Will there be room for them upon your plan? I have re-touched them, and will re-touch them again. Some of them will suggest pretty devices to a designer; and in short, I have a desire not to lose them.

I am at this moment, with all the imprudence natural to poets, expending nobody knows what, in embellishing my premises, or rather the premises of my neighbour Courtenay, which is more poetical still. I have built one summer-house already, with the boards of my old study, and am building another, spick and span, as they say. I have also a stone-cutter now at work, setting a bust of my dear old Grecian on a pedestal; and besides all this, I meditate still more that is to be done in the autumn. Your project, therefore, is most opportune, as any project must needs be that has so direct a tendency to put money into the pocket of one so likely to want it.

Ah brother poet! send me of your shade, And bid the zephyrs hasten to my aid! Or, like a worm unearth'd at noon, I go, Despatch'd by sunshine, to the shades below.

My poor Mary is as well as the heat will allow her to be; and whether it be cold or sultry, is always affectionately mindful of you and yours.

W. C.

* * * * *

It is due to the memory of my revered friend and brother-in-law, the Rev. Dr. Johnson, to state that Cowper was indebted to his ever-watchful and affectionate kindness for what he here calls his "dear old Grecian." With that amiable solicitude which formed so prominent a feature in his character, and which was always seeking how to please and to confer a favour, he had contrived to procure an antique bust of Homer, to gratify Cowper's partiality for his favourite bard. No present could possibly have been more acceptable or appropriate. We cannot avoid remarking, on this occasion, that, to anticipate a want and to supply it, to know how to minister to the gratification of another, and to enhance the gift by the grace of bestowing it, is one of the great arts of social and domestic life. It is not the amount, nor the intrinsic value of the favour, for the power of giving must in that case be restricted to the few. To give royally requires not only an enlarged heart, but ample and enlarged means. It is the appropriateness of the time and the occasion, the grace of the manner, and the unobtrusiveness of its character, that constitutes the value of the gift and endears the giver.

Cowper recorded his gratitude by the following poetical tribute, which has always been justly admired:--

Kinsman belov'd, and as a son by me! When I behold this fruit of thy regard, The sculptur'd form of my old fav'rite bard! I rev'rence feel for him, and love for thee. Joy too, and grief! much joy that there should be Wise men, and learn'd, who grudge not to reward With some applause my bold attempt and hard, Which others scorn: critics by courtesy!

The grief is this, that sunk in Homer's mine, I lose my precious years, now soon to fail! Handling his gold, which, howsoe'er it shine, Proves dross when balanc'd in the Christian scale! Be wiser thou!--like our forefather Donne, Seek heavenly wealth, and work for God alone!

TO THOMAS PARK, ESQ.

W. U., July 15, 1793.

Dear Sir,--Within these few days I have received, by favour of Miss Knapps, your acceptable present of Chapman's translation of the Iliad. I know not whether the book be a rarity, but a curiosity it certainly is. I have as yet seen but little of it; enough, however, to make me wonder that any man, with so little taste for Homer, or apprehension of his manner, should think it worth while to undertake the laborious task of translating him: the hope of pecuniary advantage may perhaps account for it.[708] His information, I fear, was not much better than his verse, for I have consulted him in one passage of some difficulty, and find him giving a sense of his own, not at all warranted by the words of Homer. Pope sometimes does this, and sometimes omits the difficult part entirely. I can boast of having done neither, though it has cost me infinite pains to exempt myself from the necessity.

[708] Chapman's version is thus described by Warton: he "frequently retrenches or impoverishes what he could not feel and express," and yet is "not always without strength and spirit." By Anton, in his Philosophical Satires, published in 1616, he is characterised as

"Greeke-thund'ring Chapman, beaten to the age, With a deepe furie and a sudden rage."

The testimony of Bishop Percy is flattering. "Had Chapman," he observes, "translated the Iliad in blank verse, it had been one of our chief classic performances."

I have seen a translation by Hobbes, which I prefer for its greater clumsiness. Many years have passed since I saw it, but it made me laugh immoderately. Poetry that is not good can only make amends for that deficiency by being ridiculous; and, because the translation of Hobbes has at least this recommendation, I shall be obliged to you, should it happen to fall in your way, if you would be so kind as to procure it for me. The only edition of it I ever saw (and perhaps there never was another[709]), was a very thick 12mo, both print and paper bad; a sort of book that would be sought in vain, perhaps, anywhere but on a stall.

[709] Cowper is mistaken in this supposition. Wood, in his Athenæ, records an edition of the Iliad in 1675; and of the Odyssey in 1667, and there was a re-impression of both in 1686.

When you saw Lady Hesketh, you saw the relation of mine with whom I have been more intimate, even from childhood, than any other. She has seen much of the world, understands it well, and, having great natural vivacity, is of course one of the most agreeable companions.

I have now arrived almost at a close of my labours on the Iliad, and have left nothing behind me, I believe, which I shall wish to alter on any future occasion. In about a fortnight or three weeks I shall begin to do the same for the Odyssey, and hope to be able to perform it while the Iliad is in printing. Then Milton will demand all my attention, and when I shall find opportunity either to revise your MSS., or to write a poem of my own,[710] which I have in contemplation, I can hardly say. Certainly not till both these tasks are accomplished.

I remain, dear sir, With many thanks for your kind present, Sincerely yours, W. C.

[710] The Four Ages.

TO MRS. CHARLOTTE SMITH.

Weston, July 25, 1793.

My dear Madam,--Many reasons concurred to make me impatient for the arrival of your most acceptable present,[711] and among them was the fear lest you should perhaps suspect me of tardiness in acknowledging so great a favour; a fear, that, as often as it prevailed, distressed me exceedingly. At length I have received it, and my little bookseller assures me, that he sent it the very day he got it; by some mistake, however, the wagon brought it instead of the coach, which occasioned the delay.

[711] The poem of the Emigrants, which was dedicated to Cowper.

It came this morning, about an hour ago; consequently I have not had time to peruse the poem, though you may be sure I have found enough for the perusal of the dedication. I have, in fact, given it three readings, and in each have found increasing pleasure.

I am a whimsical creature: when I write for the public, I write of course with a desire to please; in other words, to acquire fame, and I labour accordingly; but when I find that I have succeeded, feel myself alarmed, and ready to shrink from the acquisition.

This I have felt more than once; and when I saw my name at the head of your dedication, I felt it again; but the consummate delicacy of your praise soon convinced me that I might spare my blushes, and that the demand was less upon my modesty than my gratitude. Of that be assured, dear madam, and of the truest esteem and respect of your most obliged and affectionate humble servant,

W. C.

P. S. I should have been much grieved to have let slip this opportunity of thanking you for your charming sonnets, and my two most agreeable old friends, Monimia and Orlando.[712]

[712] Mrs. Charlotte Smith is well known as an authoress, and particularly for her beautiful sonnets. She was formerly a great eulogist of the French Revolution, but the horrors which distinguished that political era led to a change in her sentiments, which she publicly avowed in her "Banished Man." There is a great plaintiveness of feeling in all her writings, arising from the unfortunate incidents of her chequered life. We remember this lady, with her family, formerly resident at Oxford, where she excited much interest by her talents and misfortunes.

TO THE REV. MR. GREATHEED.

Weston, July 27, 1793.

I was not without some expectation of a line from you, my dear sir, though you did not promise me one at your departure, and am happy not to have been disappointed; still happier to learn that you and Mrs. Greatheed are well, and so delightfully situated. Your kind offer to us of sharing with you the house which you at present inhabit, added to the short, but lively, description of the scenery that surrounds it, wants nothing to win our acceptance, should it please God to give Mrs. Unwin a little more strength, and should I ever be master of my time so as to be able to gratify myself with what would please me most. But many have claims upon us, and some who cannot absolutely be said to have any would yet complain and think themselves slighted, should we prefer rocks and caves to them. In short, we are called so many ways, that these numerous demands are likely to operate as a _remora_, and to keep us fixed at home. Here we can occasionally have the pleasure of yours and Mrs. Greatheed's company, and to have it here must I believe, content us. Hayley in his last letter gives me reason to expect the pleasure of seeing him and his dear boy Tom, in the autumn. He will use all his eloquence to draw us to Eartham again. My cousin Johnny, of Norfolk, holds me under promise to make my first trip thither, and the very same promise I have hastily made to visit Sir John and Lady Throckmorton, at Bucklands. How to reconcile such clashing promises, and give satisfaction to all, would puzzle me, had I nothing else to do; and therefore, as I say, the result will probably be, that we shall find ourselves obliged to go nowhere, since we cannot everywhere.

* * * * *

Wishing you both safe at home again, and to see you as soon as may be here,

I remain, Affectionately yours, W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, July 27, 1793.

I have been vexed with myself, my dearest brother, and with every thing about me, not excepting even Homer himself, that I have been obliged so long to delay an answer to your last kind letter. If I listen any longer to calls another way, I shall hardly be able to tell you how happy we are in the hope of seeing you in the autumn, before the autumn will have arrived. Thrice welcome will you and your dear boy be to us, and the longer you will afford us your company, the more welcome. I have set up the head of Homer on a famous fine pedestal, and a very majestic appearance he makes. I am now puzzled about a motto, and wish you to decide for me between two, one of which I have composed myself, a Greek one, as follows;

Εικονατις ταυτην; κλυτον ανερος ουνομ' ολωλεν. Ουνομα δ'ουτος ανηρ αφθιτον αιεν εχει.

The other is my own translation of a passage in the Odyssey, the original of which I have seen used as a motto to an engraved head of Homer many a time.

The present edition of the lines stands thus,

Him partially the muse And dearly loved, yet gave him good and ill: She quenched his sight, but gave him strains divine

Tell me, by the way, (if you ever had any speculations on the subject,) what is it you suppose Homer to have meant in particular, when he ascribed his blindness to the muse, for that he speaks of himself under the name of Demodocus, in the eighth book, I believe is by all admitted. How could the old bard study himself blind, when books were either so few or none at all? And did he write his poems? If neither were the cause, as seems reasonable to imagine, how could he incur his blindness by such means as could be justly imputable to the muse? Would mere thinking blind him? I want to know:

"Call up some spirit from the vasty deep!"

I said to my Sam[713] ----, "Sam, build me a shed in the garden, with any thing that you can find, and make it rude and rough, like one of those at Eartham."----"Yes, Sir," says Sam, and straightway laying his own noddle, and the carpenter's noddle together, has built me a thing fit for Stow Gardens. Is not this vexatious?----I threaten to inscribe it thus:

Beware of building? I intended Rough logs and thatch, and thus it ended.

[713] Samuel Roberts, his faithful servant.

But my Mary says, I shall break Sam's heart and the carpenter's too, and will not consent to it. Poor Mary sleeps but ill. How have you lived who cannot bear a sun-beam?

Adieu! My dearest Hayley, W. C.

* * * * *

The following seasonable and edifying letter, addressed by Cowper to his beloved kinsman, on the occasion of his ordination, will be read with interest.

TO THE REV. JOHN JOHNSON.[714]

[714] Private correspondence.

August 2, 1793.

My dearest Johnny,--The bishop of Norwich has won my heart by his kind and liberal behaviour to you; and, if I knew him, I would tell him so.

I am glad that your auditors find your voice strong and your utterance distinct; glad, too, that your doctrine has hitherto made you no enemies. You have a gracious Master, who, it seems, will not suffer you to see war in the beginning. It will be a wonder, however, if you do not, sooner or later, find out that sore place in every heart which can ill endure the touch of apostolic doctrine. Somebody will smart in his conscience, and you will hear of it. I say not this, my dear Johnny, to terrify, but to prepare you for that which is likely to happen, and which, troublesome as it may prove, is yet devoutly to be wished; for, in general, there is little good done by preachers till the world begins to abuse them. But understand me aright. I do not mean that you should give them unnecessary provocation, by scolding and railing at them, as some, more zealous than wise, are apt to do. That were to deserve their anger. No; there is no need of it. The self-abasing doctrines of the gospel will, of themselves, create you enemies; but remember this, for your comfort--they will also, in due time, transform them into friends, and make them love you, as if they were your own children. God give you many such; as, if you are faithful to his cause, I trust he will!

Sir John and Lady Throckmorton have lately arrived in England, and are now at the Hall. They have brought me from Rome a set of engravings on Odyssey subjects, by Flaxman, whom you have heard Hayley celebrate. They are very fine, very much in the antique style, and a present from the Dowager Lady Spencer.

Ever yours, W. C.

TO LADY HESKETH.

Weston, Aug. 11, 1793.

My dearest Cousin,--I am glad that my poor and hasty attempts to express some little civility to Miss Fanshaw and the amiable Count,[715] have your and her approbation. The lines addressed to her were not what I would have made them, but lack of time, a lack which always presses me, would not suffer me to improve them. Many thanks for her letter, which, were my merits less the subject of it, I should without scruple say is an excellent one. She writes with the force and accuracy of a person skilled in more languages than are spoken in the present day, as I doubt not that she is. I perfectly approve the theme she recommends to me, but am at present so totally absorbed in Homer, that all I do beside is ill done, being hurried over; and I would not execute ill a subject of her recommending.

[715] Count Gravina, the Spanish Admiral.

I shall watch the walnuts with more attention than they who eat them, which I do in some hope, though you do not expressly say so, that when their threshing time arrives, we shall see you here. I am now going to paper my new study, and in a short time it will be fit to inhabit.

Lady Spencer has sent me a present from Rome, by the hands of Sir John Throckmorton, engravings of Odyssey subjects, after figures by Flaxman,[716] a statuary at present resident there, of high repute, and much a friend of Hayley's.

[716] These illustrations are executed in outline, and form one of the most beautiful and elegant specimens of professional art.

Thou livest, my dear, I acknowledge, in a very fine country, but they have spoiled it by building London in it.

Adieu, W. C.

* * * * *

That the allusion in the former part of the letter may be understood, it is necessary to state, that Lady Hesketh had lent a manuscript poem of Cowper's to her friend Miss Fanshaw, with an injunction that she should neither show it nor take a copy. This promise was violated, and the reason assigned is expressed by the young lady in the following verses.

What wonder! if my wavering hand Had dared to disobey, When Hesketh gave a harsh command, And Cowper led astray?

Then take this tempting gift of thine, By pen uncopied yet; But, canst thou memory confine, Or teach me to forget?

More lasting than the touch of art The characters remain, When written by a feeling heart On tablets of the brain.

COWPER'S REPLY.

To be remembered thus is fame, And in the first degree; And did the few like her the same, The press might rest for me.

So Homer, in the memory stored Of many a Grecian belle, Was once preserved--a richer hoard, But never lodged so well.

We add the verses addressed to Count Gravina, whom Cowper calls "the amiable Count," and who had translated the well-known stanzas on the Rose[717] into Italian verse.

[717] 'The Rose had been washed, just washed in a shower,' &c.

My Rose, Gravina, blooms anew, And, steep'd not now in rain, But in Castalian streams by you, Will never fade again.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, Aug. 15, 1793.

Instead of a pound or two, spending a mint Must serve me at least, I believe, with a hint, That building, and building, a man may be driven At last out of doors, and have no house to live in.

Besides, my dearest brother, they have not only built for me what I did not want, but have ruined a notable tetrastic by doing so. I had written one which I designed for a hermitage, and it will by no means suit the fine and pompous affair which they have made instead of one. So that, as a poet, I am every way afflicted; made poorer than I need have been, and robbed of my verses: what case can be more deplorable?[718]

[718] The lines here alluded to are entitled, "Inscription for an Hermitage;" and are as follow:--

This cabin, Mary, in my sight appears, Built as it has been in our waning years, A rest afforded to our weary feet, Preliminary to--the last retreat.

You must not suppose me ignorant of what Flaxman has done, or that I have not seen it, or that I am not actually in possession of it, at least of the engravings which you mention. In fact, I have had them more than a fortnight. Lady Dowager Spencer, to whom I inscribed my Odyssey, and who was at Rome when Sir John Throckmorton was there, charged him with them as a present to me, and arriving here lately he executed his commission. Romney, I doubt not, is right in his judgment of them; he is an artist himself, and cannot easily be mistaken; and I take his opinion as an oracle, the rather because it coincides exactly with my own. The figures are highly classical, antique, and elegant; especially that of Penelope, who, whether she wakes or sleeps, must necessarily charm all beholders.

Your scheme of embellishing my Odyssey with these plates is a kind one, and the fruit of your benevolence to me; but Johnson, I fear, will hardly stake so much money as the cost would amount to, on a work, the fate of which is at present uncertain. Nor could we adorn the Odyssey in this splendid manner, unless we had similar ornaments to bestow on the Iliad. Such, I presume, are not ready, and much time must elapse even if Flaxman should accede to the plan, before he could possibly prepare them. Happy indeed should I be to see a work of mine so nobly accompanied, but, should that good fortune ever attend me, it cannot take place till the third or fourth edition shall afford the occasion. This I regret, and I regret too that you will have seen them before I can have an opportunity to show them to you. Here is sixpence for you if you will abstain from the sight of them while you are in London.

The sculptor?--nameless, though once dear to fame: But this man bears an everlasting name.[719]

[719] A translation of Cowper's Greek verses on his bust of Homer.

So I purpose it shall stand; and on the pedestal, when you come, in that form you will find it. The added line from the Odyssey is charming, but the assumption of sonship to Homer seems too daring; suppose it stood thus:

Οζ δε παιζ ω πατοι και ουποτε γησομαι αυτου.

I am not sure that this would be clear of the same objection, and it departs from the text still more.

With my poor Mary's best love and our united wishes to see you here,

I remain, my dearest brother, Ever yours, W. C.

TO MRS. COURTENAY.

Weston, Aug. 20, 1793.

My dearest Catharina is too reasonable, I know, to expect news from me, who live on the outside of the world, and know nothing that passes within it. The best news is, that, though you are gone, you are not gone for ever, as once I supposed you were, and said that we should probably meet no more. Some news however we have; but then I conclude that you have already received it from the Doctor, and that thought almost deprives me of all courage to relate it. On the evening of the feast, Bob Archer's house affording, I suppose, the best room for the purpose, all the lads and lasses who felt themselves disposed to dance, assembled there. Long time they danced, at least long time they did something a little like it, when at last the company having retired, the fiddler asked Bob for a lodging; Bob replied--"that his beds were all full of his own family, but if he chose it he would show him a hay-cock, where he might sleep as sound as in any bed whatever."--So forth they went together, and when they reached the place, the fiddler knocked down Bob, and demanded his money. But, happily for Bob, though he might be knocked down, and actually was so, yet he could not possibly be robbed, having nothing. The fiddler, therefore, having amused himself with kicking him and beating him, as he lay, as long as he saw good, left him, and has never been heard of since, nor inquired after indeed, being no doubt the last man in the world whom Bob wishes to see again.

By a letter from Hayley, to-day, I learn, that Flaxman, to whom we are indebted for those Odyssey figures which Lady Frog brought over, has almost finished a set for the Iliad also. I should be glad to embellish my Homer with them, but neither my bookseller, nor I, shall probably choose to risk so expensive an ornament on a work, whose reception with the public is at present doubtful.

Adieu, my dearest Catharina. Give my best love to your husband. Come home as soon as you can, and accept our united very best wishes.

W. C.

TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ.

Weston, Aug. 22, 1793.

My dear Friend,--I rejoice that you have had so pleasant an excursion, and have beheld so many beautiful scenes. Except the delightful Upway, I have seen them all. I have lived much at Southampton, have slept and caught a sore throat at Lyndhurst, and have swum in the bay of Weymouth. It will give us great pleasure to see you here, should your business give you an opportunity to finish your excursions of this season with one to Weston.

As for my going on, it is much as usual. I rise at six; an industrious and wholesome practice from which I have never swerved since March. I breakfast generally about eleven--have given the intermediate time to my old delightful bard. Villoisson no longer keeps me company, I therefore now jog along with Clarke and Barnes at my elbow, and from the excellent annotations of the former, select such as I think likely to be useful, or that recommend themselves by the amusement they may afford; of which sorts there are not a few. Barnes also affords me some of both kinds, but not so many, his notes being chiefly paraphrastical or grammatical. My only fear is, lest between them both I should make my work too voluminous.

W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, Aug. 27, 1793.

I thank you, my dear brother, for consulting the Gibbonian oracle on the question concerning Homer's muse and his blindness. I proposed it likewise to my little neighbour Buchanan, who gave me precisely the same answer. I felt an insatiable thirst to learn something new concerning him, and, despairing of information from others, was willing to hope, that I had stumbled on matter unnoticed by the commentators, and might, perhaps, acquire a little intelligence from himself. But the great and the little oracle together have extinguished that hope, and I despair now of making any curious discoveries about him.

Since Flaxman (which I did not know till your letter told me so) has been at work for the Iliad, as well as the Odyssey, it seems a great pity, that the engravings should not be bound up with some Homer or other; and, as I said before, I should have been too proud to have bound them up in mine. But there is an objection, at least such it seems to me, that threatens to disqualify them for such a use, namely, the shape and size of them, which are such, that no book of the usual form could possibly receive them, save in a folded state, which, I apprehend, would be to murder them.

The monument of Lord Mansfield, for which you say he is engaged, will (I dare say) prove a noble effort of genius.[720] Statuaries, as I have heard an eminent one say, do not much trouble themselves about a likeness: else I would give much to be able to communicate to Flaxman the perfect idea that I have of the subject, such as he was forty years ago. He was at that time wonderfully handsome, and would expound the most mysterious intricacies of the law, or recapitulate both matter and evidence of a cause, as long as from hence to Eartham, with an intelligent smile on his features, that bespoke plainly the perfect ease with which he did it. The most abstruse studies (I believe) never cost him any labour.

[720] The celebrated monument in Westminster Abbey.

You say nothing lately of your intended journey our way: yet the year is waning, and the shorter days give you a hint to lose no time unnecessarily. Lately we had the whole family at the Hall, and now we have nobody. The Throckmortons are gone into Berkshire, and the Courtenays into Yorkshire. They are so pleasant a family, that I heartily wish you to see them; and at the same time wish to see you before they return, which will not be sooner than October. How shall I reconcile these wishes seemingly opposite? Why, by wishing that you may come soon and stay long. I know no other way of doing it.

My poor Mary is much as usual. I have set up Homer's head, and inscribed the pedestal; my own Greek at the top, with your translation under it, and

Ος δε παις ω πατρι, &c.

It makes altogether a very smart and learned appearance.[721]

W. C.

[721] This bust and pedestal were afterwards removed to Sir George Throckmorton's grounds, and placed in the shrubbery.

TO LADY HESKETH.

August 29, 1793.

Your question, at what time your coming to us will be most agreeable, is a knotty one, and such as, had I the wisdom of Solomon, I should be puzzled to answer. I will therefore leave it still a question, and refer the time of your journey Weston-ward entirely to your own election: adding this one limitation, however, that I do not wish to see you exactly at present, on account of the unfinished state of my study, the wainscot of which still smells of paint, and which is not yet papered. But to return: as I have insinuated, thy pleasant company is the thing which I always wish, and as much at one time as at another. I believe, if I examine myself minutely, since I despair of ever having it in the height of summer, which for your sake I should desire most, the depth of the winter is the season which would be most eligible to me. For then it is, that in general I have most need of a cordial, and particularly in the month of January, I am sorry, however, that I departed so far from my first purpose, and am answering a question, which I declared myself unable to answer. Choose thy own time, secure of this, that, whatever time that be, it will always to us be a welcome one.

I thank you for your pleasant extract of Miss Fanshaw's letter.

Her pen drops eloquence as sweet As any muse's tongue can speak; Nor need a scribe, like her, regret Her want of Latin or of Greek.[722]

[722] Miss Fanshaw was an intimate friend of Lady Hesketh's, and frequently residing with her.

And now, my dear, adieu! I have done more than I expected, and begin to feel myself exhausted with so much scribbling at the end of four hours' close application to study.

W. C.

TO THE REV. MR. JOHNSON.

Weston, Sept. 4, 1793.

My dearest Johnny,--To do a kind thing, and in a kind manner, is a double kindness, and no man is more addicted to both than you, or more skilful in contriving them. Your plan to surprise me agreeably succeeded to admiration. It was only the day before yesterday, that, while we walked after dinner in the orchard, Mrs. Unwin between Sam and me, hearing the Hall clock, I observed a great difference between that and ours, and began immediately to lament, as I had often done, that there was not a sun-dial in all Weston to ascertain the true time for us. My complaint was long, and lasted till, having turned into the grass-walk, we reached the new building at the end of it; where we sat awhile and reposed ourselves. In a few minutes we returned by the way we came, when what think you was my astonishment to see what I had not seen before, though I had passed close by it, a smart sun-dial mounted on a smart stone pedestal! I assure you it seemed the effect of conjuration. I stopped short, and exclaimed--"Why, here is a sun-dial, and upon our ground! How is this? Tell me, Sam, how it came here? Do you know anything about it?" At first I really thought (that is to say, as soon as I could think at all) that this fac-totum of mine, Sam Roberts, having often heard me deplore the want of one, had given orders for the supply of that want himself, without my knowledge, and was half pleased and half offended. But he soon exculpated himself by imputing the fact to you. It was brought up to Weston (it seems) about noon: but Andrews stopped the cart at the blacksmith's, whence he sent to inquire if I was gone for my walk. As it happened, I walked not till two o'clock. So there it stood waiting till I should go forth, and was introduced before my return. Fortunately too I went out at the church end of the village, and consequently saw nothing of it. How I could possibly pass it without seeing it, when it stood in the walk, I know not, but certain it is that I did. And where I shall fix it now, I know as little. It cannot stand between the two gates, the place of your choice, as I understand from Samuel, because the hay-cart must pass that way in the season. But we are now busy in winding the walk all round the orchard, and, in doing so, shall doubtless stumble at last upon some open spot that will suit it.

There it shall stand while I live, a constant monument of your kindness.

I have this moment finished the twelfth book of the Odyssey; and I read the Iliad to Mrs. Unwin every evening.

The effect of this reading is, that I still spy blemishes, something at least that I can mend; so that, after all, the transcript of alterations which you and George have made will not be a perfect one. It would be foolish to forego an opportunity of improvement for such a reason; neither will I. It is ten o'clock, and I must breakfast. Adieu, therefore, my dear Johnny! Remember your appointment to see us in October.

Ever yours, W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, Sept. 8, 1793.

_Non sum quod simulo_, my dearest brother! I am cheerful upon paper sometimes, when I am absolutely the most dejected of all creatures. Desirous however to gain something myself by my own letters, unprofitable as they may and must be to my friends, I keep melancholy out of them as much as I can, that I may, if possible, by assuming a less gloomy air, deceive myself, and, by feigning with a continuance, improve the fiction into reality.

So you have seen Flaxman's figures, which I intended you should not have seen till I had spread them before you. How did you dare to look at them? You should have covered your eyes with both hands: I am charmed with Flaxman's Penelope, and though you don't deserve that I should, will send you a few lines, such as they are, with which she inspired me the other day while I was taking my noon-day walk.

The suitors sinn'd, but with a fair excuse, Whom all this elegance might well seduce; Nor can our censure on the husband fall, Who, for a wife so lovely, slew them all.

I know not that you will meet any body here, when we see you in October, unless perhaps my Johnny should happen to be with us. If Tom is charmed with the thoughts of coming to Weston, we are equally so with the thoughts of seeing him here. At his years I should hardly hope to make his visit agreeable to him, did I not know that he is of a temper and disposition that must make him happy every where. Give our love to him. If Romney can come with you, we have both room to receive him and hearts to make him most welcome.

W. C.

TO MRS. COURTENAY.

Weston, Sept. 15, 1793.

A thousand thanks, my dearest Catharina, for your pleasant letter; one of the pleasantest that I have received since your departure. You are very good to apologize for your delay, but I had not flattered myself with the hopes of a speedier answer. Knowing full well your talents for entertaining your friends who are present, I was sure you would with difficulty find half an hour that you could devote to an absent one.

I am glad that you think of your return. Poor Weston is a desolation without you. In the meantime I amuse myself as well as I can, thrumming old Homer's lyre, and turning the premises upside down. Upside down indeed, for so it is literally that I have been dealing with the orchard, almost ever since you went, digging and delving it around to make a new walk, which now begins to assume the shape of one, and to look as if some time or other it may serve in that capacity. Taking my usual exercise there the other day with Mrs. Unwin, a wide disagreement between your clock and ours occasioned me to complain much, as I have often done, of the want of a dial. Guess my surprise, when at the close of my complaint I saw one--saw one close at my side; a smart one, glittering in the sun, and mounted on a pedestal of stone. I was astonished. "This," I exclaimed, "is absolute conjuration!"--It was a most mysterious affair, but the mystery was at last explained.

This scribble I presume will find you just arrived at Bucklands. I would with all my heart that since dials can be thus suddenly conjured from one place to another, I could be so too, and could start up before your eyes in the middle of some walk or lawn, where you and Lady Frog are wandering.

While Pitcairne whistles for his family estate in Fifeshire, he will do well if he will sound a few notes for me. I am originally of the same shire, and a family of my name is still there, to whom perhaps he may whistle on my behalf, not altogether in vain. So shall his fife excel all my poetical efforts, which have not yet, and I dare say never will, effectually charm one acre of ground into my possession.

Remember me to Sir John, Lady Frog, and your husband--tell them I love them all. She told me once she was jealous, now indeed she seems to have some reason, since to her I have not written, and have written twice to you. But bid her be of good courage, in due time I will give her proof of my constancy.

W. C.

TO THE REV. MR. JOHNSON.

Weston, Sept. 29, 1793.

My dear Johnny,--You have done well to leave off visiting and being visited. Visits are insatiable devourers of time, and fit only for those who, if they did not that, would do nothing. The worst consequence of such departures from common practice is to be termed a singular sort of a fellow, or an odd fish; a sort of reproach that a man might be wise enough to contemn who had not half your understanding.

I look forward with pleasure to October the 11th, the day which I expect will be _albo notandus lapillo_, on account of your arrival here.

Here you will meet Mr. Rose, who comes on the 8th, and brings with him Mr. Lawrence, the painter, you may guess for what purpose. Lawrence returns when he has made his copy of me, but Mr. Rose will remain perhaps as long as you will. Hayley on the contrary will come, I suppose, just in time not to see you. Him we expect on the 20th. I trust, however, that thou wilt so order thy pastoral matters as to make thy stay here as long as possible.

Lady Hesketh, in her last letter, inquires very kindly after you, asks me for your address, and purposes soon to write to you. We hope to see her in November--so that, after a summer without company, we are likely to have an autumn and a winter sociable enough.

W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, Oct. 5, 1793.

My good intentions towards you, my dearest brother, are continually frustrated; and, which is most provoking, not by such engagements and avocations as have a right to my attention, such as those to my Mary and the old bard of Greece, but by mere impertinences, such as calls of civility from persons not very interesting to me, and letters from a distance still less interesting, because the writers of them are strangers. A man sent me a long copy of verses, which I could do no less than acknowledge. They were silly enough, and cost me eighteenpence, which was seventeenpence halfpenny farthing more than they were worth. Another sent me at the same time a plan, requesting my opinion of it, and that I would lend him my name as editor, a request with which I shall not comply, but I am obliged to tell him so, and one letter is all that I have time to despatch in a day, sometimes half a one, and sometimes I am not able to write at all. Thus it is that my time perishes, and I can neither give so much of it as I would to you or to any other valuable purpose.

On Tuesday we expect company--Mr. Rose, and Lawrence the painter. Yet once more is my patience to be exercised, and once more I am made to wish that my face had been moveable, to put on and take off at pleasure, so as to be portable in a band-box, and sent to the artist. These however will be gone, as I believe I told you, before you arrive, at which time I know not that any body will be here, except my Johnny, whose presence will not at all interfere with our readings--you will not, I believe, find me a very slashing critic--I hardly indeed expect to find any thing in your Life of Milton that I shall sentence to amputation. How should it be too long? A well-written work, sensible and spirited, such as yours was, when I saw it, is never so. But, however, we shall see. I promise to spare nothing that I think may be lopped off with advantage.

I began this letter yesterday, but could not finish it till now. I have risen this morning like an infernal frog out of Acheron, covered with the ooze and mud of melancholy. For this reason I am not sorry to find myself at the bottom of my paper, for had I more room perhaps I might fill it all with croaking, and make an heart-ache at Eartham, which I wish to be always cheerful. Adieu. My poor sympathising Mary is of course sad, but always mindful of you.

W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, Oct. 18, 1793.

My dear Brother,--I have not at present much that is necessary to say here, because I shall have the happiness of seeing you so soon; my time, according to custom, is a mere scrap, for which reason such must be my letter also.

You will find here more than I have hitherto given you reason to expect, but none who will not be happy to see you. These, however, stay with us but a short time, and will leave us in full possession of Weston on Wednesday next.

I look forward with joy to your coming, heartily wishing you a pleasant journey, in which my poor Mary joins me. Give our best love to Tom; without whom, after having been taught to look for him, we should feel our pleasure in the interview much diminished.

Læti expectamus te puerumque tuum.

W. C.

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.[723]

[723] Private correspondence.

Weston, Oct. 22, 1793.

My dear Friend,--You are very kind to apologize for a short letter, instead of reproaching me with having been so long entirely silent. I persuaded myself, however, that while you were on your journey you would miss me less as a correspondent than you do when you are at home, and therefore allowed myself to pursue my literary labours only, but still purposing to write as soon as I should have reason to judge you returned to London. Hindrances, however, to the execution even of that purpose, have interposed; and at this moment I write in the utmost haste, as indeed I always do, partly because I never begin a letter till I am already fatigued with study, and partly through fear of interruption before I can possibly finish it.

I rejoice that you have travelled so much to your satisfaction. As to me, my travelling days, I believe, are over. Our journey of last year was less beneficial, both to Mrs. Unwin's health and my spirits, than I hoped it might be; and we are hardly rich enough to migrate in quest of pleasure merely.

I thank you much for your last publication, which I am reading, as fast as I can snatch opportunity, to Mrs. Unwin. We have found it, as far as we have gone, both interesting and amusing; and I never cease to wonder at the fertility of your invention, that, shut up as you were in your vessel, and disunited from the rest of mankind, could yet furnish you with such variety, and with the means, likewise, of saying the same thing in so many different ways.[724]

Sincerely yours, W. C.

[724] The publication alluded to is entitled, "Letters to a Wife; written during three voyages to Africa, from 1750 to 1754. By the Author of Cardiphonia."

TO THE REV. J. JEKYLL RYE.

Weston, Nov. 3, 1793.

My dear Sir,--Sensible as I am of your kindness in taking such a journey, at no very pleasant season, merely to serve a friend of mine, I cannot allow my thanks to sleep till I may have the pleasure of seeing you. I hope never to show myself unmindful of so great a favour. Two lines which I received yesterday from Mr. Hurdis, written hastily on the day of decision, informed me that it was made in his favour, and by a majority of twenty.[725] I have great satisfaction in the event, and consequently hold myself indebted to all who at my instance have contributed to it.

[725] He was appointed Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford.

You may depend on me for due attention to the honest clerk's request. When he called, it was not possible that I should answer your obliging letter, for he arrived here very early, and if I suffered anything to interfere with my morning studies I should never accomplish my labours. Your hint concerning the subject for this year's copy is a very good one, and shall not be neglected.

I remain, Sincerely yours, W. C.

* * * * *

Hayley's second visit to Weston took place very soon after the date of the last letter. He found Cowper enlivened by the society of his young kinsman from Norfolk, and another of his favourite friends, Mr. Rose. The latter came recently from the seat of Lord Spencer, in Northamptonshire, commissioned to invite Cowper, and his guests, to Althorpe, where Gibbon, the historian, was making a visit of some continuance.

Cowper was strongly urged to accept this flattering invitation from a nobleman whom he cordially respected, and whose library alone might be regarded as a magnet of very powerful attraction. But the constitutional shyness of the poet, and the infirm state of Mrs. Unwin's health, conspired to prevent the meeting. It would have been curious to have contemplated the Poet of Christianity and the author of the celebrated sixteenth chapter in "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" placed in juxtaposition with each other. The reflection would not have escaped a pious observer how much happier, in the eye of wisdom, was the state of Cowper, clouded as it was by depression and sorrow, than that of the unbelieving philosopher, though in the zenith of his fame. We know it has been asserted that men are not answerable for their creed. Why then are the Jews a scattered people, the living witnesses of the truth of a divine Revelation and of the avenging justice of God? But scepticism can never justly be said to originate in want of evidence. Men doubt because they search after truth with the pride of the intellect, instead of seeking it with the simplicity of a little child, and that humility of spirit, by which only it is to be found.

TO MRS. COURTENAY.

Weston, Nov. 4, 1793.

I seldom rejoice in a day of soaking rain like this, but in this, my dearest Catharina, I do rejoice sincerely, because it affords me an opportunity of writing to you, which, if fair weather had invited us into the orchard-walk at the usual hour, I should not easily have found. I am a most busy man, busy to a degree that sometimes half distracts me; but, if complete distraction be occasioned by having the thoughts too much and too long attached to a single point, I am in no danger of it, with such a perpetual whirl are mine whisked about from one subject to another. When two poets meet, there are fine doings I can assure you. My Homer finds work for Hayley, and his Life of Milton work for me, so that we are neither of us one moment idle. Poor Mrs. Unwin in the meantime sits quiet in her corner, occasionally laughing at us both, and not seldom interrupting us with some question or remark, for which she is constantly rewarded by me with a "Hush--hold your peace." Bless yourself, my dear Catharina, that you are not connected with a poet, especially that you have not two to deal with; ladies who have, may be bidden indeed to hold their peace, but very little peace have they. How should they in fact have any, continually enjoined as they are to be silent.

* * * * *

The same fever that has been so epidemic there, has been severely felt here likewise; some have died, and a multitude have been in danger. Two under our own roof have been infected with it, and I am not sure that I have perfectly escaped myself, but I am now well again.

I have persuaded Hayley to stay a week longer, and again my hopes revive, that he may yet have an opportunity to know my friends before he returns into Sussex. I write amidst a chaos of interruptions: Hayley on one hand spouts Greek, and on the other hand Mrs. Unwin continues talking, sometimes to us, and sometimes, because we are both too busy to attend to her, she holds a dialogue with herself. Query, is not this a bull--and ought I not instead of dialogue to have said soliloquy?

Adieu! With our united love to all your party, and with ardent wishes soon to see you all at Weston, I remain, my dearest Catharina,

Ever yours, W. C.

* * * * *

Though Cowper writes with apparent cheerfulness, yet Hayley, referring to this visit, remarks, "My fears for him, in every point of view, were alarmed by his present very singular condition. He possessed completely, at this period, all the admirable faculties of his mind, and all the native tenderness of his heart; but there was something indescribable in his appearance, which led me to apprehend that, without some signal event in his favour, to re-animate his spirits, they would gradually sink into hopeless dejection. The state of his aged infirm companion afforded additional ground for increasing solicitude. Her cheerful and beneficent spirit could hardly resist her own accumulated maladies, so far as to preserve ability sufficient to watch over the tender health of him, whom she had watched and guarded so long."

Under these circumstances, Hayley, with an ardour of zeal and a regard for Cowper's welfare, that reflect the highest honour upon his character, determined on his return to London to interest his more powerful friends in his behalf, and thus secure, if possible, a timely provision against future difficulties. The necessity for this act of kindness will soon appear to be painfully urgent. In the meantime he cheered Cowper's mind, harassed by his Miltonic engagement, with intelligence that had a tendency to relieve him from much of his present embarrassment and dejection.

TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.

Weston, Nov. 5, 1793.

My dear Friend,--In a letter from Lady Hesketh, which I received not long since, she informed me how very pleasantly she had spent some time at Wargrave. We now begin to expect her here, where our charms of situation are perhaps not equal to yours, yet by no means contemptible. She told me she had spoken to you in very handsome terms of the country round about us, but not so of our house and the view before it. The house itself, however, is not unworthy some commendation; small as it is, it is neat, and neater than she is aware of; for my study and the room over it have been repaired and beautified this summer, and little more was wanting to make it an abode sufficiently commodious for a man of my moderate desires. As to the prospect from it, that she misrepresented strangely, as I hope soon to have an opportunity to convince her by ocular demonstration. She told you, I know, of certain cottages opposite to us, or rather she described them as poor houses and hovels, that effectually blind our windows. But none such exist. On the contrary, the opposite object and the only one, is an orchard, so well planted, and with trees of such growth, that we seem to look into a wood, or rather to be surrounded by one. Thus, placed as we are in the midst of a village, we have none of those disagreeables that belong to such a position, and the village itself is one of the prettiest I know; terminated at one end by the church tower, seen through the trees, and at the other by a very handsome gateway, opening into a fine grove of elms, belonging to our neighbour Courtenay. How happy should I be to show it instead of describing it to you!

Adieu, my dear friend, W. C.

TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT.

Weston, Nov. 10, 1793.

My dear Friend,--You are very kind to consider my literary engagements, and to make them a reason for not interrupting me more frequently with a letter; but though I am indeed as busy as an author or an editor can well be, and am not apt to be overjoyed at the arrival of letters from uninteresting quarters, I shall always, I hope, have leisure both to peruse and to answer those of my real friends, and to do both with pleasure.

I have to thank you much for your benevolent aid in the affair of my friend Hurdis. You have doubtless learned, ere now, that he has succeeded, and carried the prize by a majority of twenty. He is well qualified for the post he has gained. So much the better for the honour of the Oxonian laurel, and so much the more for the credit of those who have favoured him with their suffrages.

I am entirely of your mind respecting this conflagration by which all Europe suffers at present,[726] and is likely to suffer for a long time to come. The same mistake seems to have prevailed as in the American business. We then flattered ourselves that the colonies would prove an easy conquest, and, when all the neighbour nations armed themselves against France, we imagined, I believe, that she too would be presently vanquished. But we begin already to be undeceived, and God only knows to what a degree we may find we have erred at the conclusion. Such, however, is the state of things all around us, as reminds me continually of the Psalmist's expression--"_He shall break them in pieces like a potter's vessel._" And I rather wish than hope, in some of my melancholy moods, that England herself may escape a fracture.

I remain, truly yours, W. C.

[726] The effects of the French Revolution.

TO THE REV. MR. HURDIS.

Weston, Nov. 24, 1793.

My dear Sir,--Though my congratulations have been delayed, you have no friend, numerous as your friends are, who has more sincerely rejoiced in your success than I. It was no small mortification to me, to find that three out of the six whom I had engaged were not qualified to vote. You have prevailed, however, and by a considerable majority; there is therefore no room left for regret. When your short note arrived, which gave me the agreeable news of your victory, our friend of Eartham was with me, and shared largely in the joy that I felt on the occasion. He left me but a few days since, having spent somewhat more than a fortnight here; during which time we employed all our leisure hours in the revisal of his Life of Milton. It is now finished, and a very finished work it is; and one that will do great honour, I am persuaded, to the biographer, and the excellent man of injured memory who is the subject of it. As to my own concern with the works of this first of poets, which has been long a matter of burthensome contemplation, I have the happiness to find at last that I am at liberty to postpone my labours. While I expected that my commentary would be called for in the ensuing spring, I looked forward to the undertaking with dismay, not seeing a shadow of probability that I should be ready to answer the demand; for this ultimate revisal of my Homer, together with the notes, occupies completely at present (and will for some time longer) all the little leisure that I have for study--leisure which I gain at this season of the year by rising long before daylight.

You are now become a nearer neighbour, and, as your professorship, I hope, will not engross you wholly, will find an opportunity to give me your company at Weston. Let me hear from you soon; tell me how you like your new office, and whether you perform the duties of it with pleasure to yourself. With much pleasure to others you will, I doubt not, and with equal advantage.

W. C.

TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ.

Weston, Nov. 29, 1793.

My dear Friend,--I have risen, while the owls are still hooting, to pursue my accustomed labours in the mine of Homer; but before I enter upon them, shall give the first moment of daylight to the purpose of thanking you for your last letter, containing many pleasant articles of intelligence, with nothing to abate the pleasantness of them, except the single circumstance that we are not likely to see you here so soon as I expected. My hope was, that the first frost would bring you and the amiable painter with you.[727] If, however, you are prevented by the business of your respective professions, you are well prevented, and I will endeavour to be patient. When the latter was here, he mentioned one day the subject of Diomede's horses, driven under the axle of his chariot by the thunderbolt which fell at their feet, as a subject for his pencil.[728] It is certainly a noble one, and therefore worthy of his study and attention. It occurred to me at the moment, but I know not what it was that made me forget it again the next moment, that the horses of Achilles flying over the foss, with Patroclus and Automedon in the chariot, would be a good companion for it.[729] Should you happen to recollect this, when you next see him, you may submit it, if you please, to his consideration. I stumbled yesterday on another subject, which reminded me of said excellent artist, as likely to afford a fine opportunity to the expression that he could give it. It is found in the shooting match in the twenty-third book of the Iliad, between Meriones and Teucer. The former cuts the string with which the dove is tied to the mast-head, and sets her at liberty; the latter, standing at his side, in all the eagerness of emulation, points an arrow at the mark with his right hand, while with his left he snatches the bow from his competitor; he is a fine poetical figure, but Mr. Lawrence himself must judge whether or not he promises as well for the canvas.[730]

[727] Lawrence.

[728]

He, thund'ring downward hurl'd his candent bolt To the horse-feet of Diomede: dire fum'd The flaming sulphur, and both horses drove Under the axle.--

_Cowper's Version_, book viii.

[729]

Right o'er the hollow foes the coursers leap'd, By the immortal gods to Peleus given.--

_Cowper's Version_, book xvi.

[730] Cowper here inverts the order of the names, and attributes to Teucer, what in the original is ascribed to Meriones.

At once Meriones withdrew the bow From Teucer's hand, but held the shaft the while, Already aim'd...... He ey'd the dove aloft beneath a cloud, And struck her circling high in air; the shaft Pass'd through her, and returning pierc'd the soil Before the foot of brave Meriones. She, perching on the mast again, her head Reclin'd, and hung her wide-unfolded wing; But, soon expiring, dropp'd and fell remote.

The concluding lines of this passage convey a beautiful and affecting image.

He does great honour to my physiognomy by his intention to get it engraved; and, though I think I foresee that this _private publication_ will grow in time into a publication of absolute publicity, I find it impossible to be dissatisfied with anything that seems eligible both to him and you. To say the truth, when a man has once turned his mind inside out for the inspection of all who choose to inspect it, to make a secret of his face seems but little better than a self-contradiction. At the same time, however, I shall be best pleased if it be kept, according to your intentions, as a rarity.

I have lost Hayley, and begin to be uneasy at not hearing from him; tell me about him when you write.

I should be happy to have a work of mine embellished by Lawrence, and made a companion for a work of Hayley's. It is an event to which I look forward with the utmost complacence. I cannot tell you what a relief I feel it not to be pressed for Milton.

W. C.

TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ.

Weston, Dec. 8, 1793.

My dear Friend,--In my last I forgot to thank you for the box of books, containing also the pamphlets. We have read, that is to say, my cousin has, who reads to us in the evening, the history of Jonathan Wild,[731] and found it highly entertaining. The satire on great men is witty, and I believe perfectly just: we have no censure to pass on it, unless that we think the character of Mrs. Heartfree not well sustained; not quite delicate in the latter part of it; and that the constant effect of her charms upon every man who sees her, has a sameness in it that is tiresome, and betrays either much carelessness, or idleness, or lack of invention. It is possible, indeed, that the author might intend by this circumstance a satirical glance at novelists, whose heroines are generally all bewitching; but it is a fault that he had better have noticed in another manner, and not have exemplified in his own.

[731] A production of Fielding's.

The first volume of _Man as He is_ has lain unread in my study-window this twelvemonth, and would have been returned unread to its owner, had not my cousin come in good time to save it from that disgrace. We are now reading it, and find it excellent; abounding with wit and just sentiment, and knowledge both of books and men.

Adieu! W. C.

TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.

Weston, Dec. 8, 1793.

I have waited, and waited impatiently, for a line from you, and am at last determined to send you one, to inquire what has become of you, and why you are silent so much longer than usual.

I want to know many things, which only you can tell me, but especially I want to know what has been the issue of your conference with Nichol: has he seen your work?[732] I am impatient for the appearance of it, because impatient to have the spotless credit of the great poet's character, as a man and a citizen, vindicated, as it ought to be, and as it never will be again.

[732] Hayley's Life of Milton.

It is a great relief to me, that my Miltonic labours are suspended. I am now busy in transcribing the alterations of Homer, having finished the whole revisal. I must then write a new preface, which done, I shall endeavour immediately to descant on _The Four Ages_.

Adieu! my dear brother, W. C.

* * * * *

The Miltonic labours of Cowper were not only suspended at this time, but we lament to say never resumed.

There is a period in the history of men of letters, when the mind begins to shrink from the toil and responsibility of a great undertaking, and to feel the necessity of contracting its exertions within limits more suited to its diminished powers. Physical and moral causes are often found to co-operate in hastening this crisis. The sensibilities that are inseparable from genius, the ardour that consumes itself by its own fires, the labour of thought, and the inadequacy of the body to sustain the energies of the soul within--these often unite in harassing the spirits, and sowing the seeds of a premature decay. Such was now the case with Cowper. His literary exertions had been too unremitting, and though we must allow much to the influence of his unhappy malady, and to the illness of Mrs. Unwin, yet there can be no doubt that his long and laborious habits of study had no small share in undermining his constitution.

It seems desirable therefore, at this period, to refer to the intended edition of Milton, and briefly to state the result of his labours.

The design is thus stated by Cowper himself, in one of his letters. "A Milton, that is to rival, and if possible to exceed in splendour, Boydell's Shakspeare, is in contemplation, and I am in the Editor's office. Fuseli is the painter. My business will be to select notes from others, and to write original notes; to translate the Latin and Italian poems, and to give a correct text."

All that he was enabled to accomplish of this undertaking was as follows:

He commenced the series of his translations about the middle of September, 1791. In February, 1792, he had completed all his Latin pieces, and shortly after he finished the Italian. While at Eartham, in August, he revised all his translations, and they were subsequently retouched, in his declining strength, at East Dereham. From an amiable desire to avoid what might create irritation, he omitted the Poems against the Catholics, and thus assigned his motives in a letter to Johnson.

Weston, Oct. 30, 1791.

"We and the Papists are at present on amicable terms. They have behaved themselves peaceably many years, and have lately received favours from Government. I should think, therefore, that the dying embers of ancient animosity had better not be troubled."

* * * * *

He also omitted a few of the minuter poems, as not worthy of being ranked with the rest.

He was assisted in the execution of this work by the Adamo of Andreini, Bentley's Milton, an interleaved copy of Newton's, and Warton's edition of the minor poems.[733]

[733] Of these editions of Milton, that of Bentley has always been considered a complete failure. It is remarkable for the boldness of its conjectural emendations, and for the liberties taken with the text. An amusing anecdote is recorded on this subject. To a friend expostulating with him on the occasion, and urging that it was impossible for Milton, in so many instances, to have written as he alleged, he replied with his characteristic spirit, "Then he ought to have written so." Bishop Newton's edition has acquired just celebrity, and has served as the basis of all subsequent editions. It has been deservedly called "the best edited English Classic up to the period of its publication." Warton's edition of "The Juvenile and Minor Poems" discovers a classical and elegant taste. Its merit, however, is greatly impaired by the severity of its censures on Milton's republican and religious principles. It was to rescue that great poet from the animadversions of Warton and Dr. Johnson that Hayley engaged in a life of Milton, which does honour to the manliness and generosity of his feelings. But the most powerful defence is that of the Rev. Dr. Symmons, who, with considerable vigour of thought and language, has taken a most comprehensive view of the character and prose writings of Milton. He would have been entitled to distinguished praise, if, in vindicating the republicanism of Milton, he had not deeply fallen into it himself. In the present day the clouds of prejudice seem to have subsided, and the errors of the politician are deservedly forgotten in the celebrity of the poet. There was a period when, according to Dr. Johnson, a monument to Philips, with an inscription by Atterbury, in which he was said to be _soli Miltono secundus_, was refused admittance by Dean Sprat into Westminster Abbey, on the ground of its "being too detestable to be read on the wall of a building dedicated to devotion."

The honours of a monument were at length conceded to Milton himself; but the beautiful and elegant Latin inscription, composed by Dr. George, Provost of King's College, Cambridge, shows that it was thought necessary to apologize for its admission into that sacred repository of kings and prelates.*

*We cannot refrain from enriching our pages with this much admired Epitaph.

"Augusti regum cineres sanctæque favillæ Heroum, Vosque O! venerandi nominis umbræ! Parcite, quod vestris, infensum regibus olim, Sedibus infertur nomen: liceatque supremis Funeribus finire odia, et mors obruat iras. Nunc sub foederibus coeant felicibus, una Libertas, et jus sacri inviolabile sceptri. Rege sub _Augusto_ fas sit laudare _Catonem_."

With respect to his critical labours, he proceeded with singular slowness and difficulty. It appears to have been a most oppressive burden on his spirits. "Milton especially," he observes, "is my grievance; and I might almost as well be haunted by his ghost as goaded with continual reproaches for neglecting him." He was always soliciting more time, and when the appointed period was expired, he renewed his application for fresh delay. His commentary is restricted to the three first books of the Paradise Lost.

This seems to imply that however nature designed him to be a poet, she denied the qualifications necessary to constitute the critic; for it will generally be found, that to execute with delight and ease is the attribute of genius, and the evidence of natural impulse; and that slowness of performance indicates the want of those powers that afford the promise and pledge of success.

In this unfinished state, the work was published by Hayley, in the year 1808, for the benefit of the second son of Mr. Rose, the godchild of Cowper. Some designs in outline were furnished by Flaxman, highly characteristic of his graceful style.

The translations are a perfect model of beautiful and elegant versification.

We consider Milton's address to his father to be one of the most beautiful compositions extant, and rejoice in presenting it to the reader in an English form, so worthy of the original Latin poem.

TO HIS FATHER.

Oh that Pieria's spring would thro' my breast Pour its inspiring influence, and rush, No rill, but rather an o'erflowing flood! That for my venerable father's sake, All meaner themes renounc'd, my muse on wings Of duty borne, might reach a loftier strain. For thee, my father! howsoe'er it please, She frames this slender work, nor know I aught, That may thy gifts more suitably requite; Though to requite them suitably would ask Returns much nobler, and surpassing far The meagre stores of verbal gratitude: But, such as I possess, I send thee all. This page presents thee in their full amount With thy son's treasures, and the sum is nought: Nought save the riches that from airy dream In secret grottoes, and in laurel bow'rs, I have, by golden Clio's gift, acquir'd.

He then sings the praises of song in the following animated strain.

Verse is a work divine; despise not thou Verse therefore, which evinces (nothing more) Man's heavenly source, and which, retaining still Some scintillations of Promethean fire, Bespeaks him animated from above. The gods love verse; the infernal pow'rs themselves Confess the influence of verse, which stirs The lowest deep, and binds in triple chains Of adamant both Pluto and the shades. In verse the Delphic priestess, and the pale Tremulous Sybil, make the future known, And he who sacrifices, on the shrine Hangs verse, both when he smites the threat'ning bull, And when he spreads his reeking entrails wide To scrutinize the Fates envelop'd there.

He anticipates it as one of the employments of glorified spirits in heaven.

We too, ourselves, what time we seek again Our native skies, and one eternal Now[734] Shall be the only measure of our being, Crown'd all with gold, and chanting to the lyre Harmonious verse, shall range the courts above, And make the starry firmament resound.

[734] The same expression is used by Cowley:

"Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, But an eternal Now does always last."

The sympathy existing between the two kindred studies of poetry and music is described with happy effect.

Now say, what wonder is it, if a son Of thine delight in verse, if so conjoin'd In close affinity, we sympathize In social arts, and kindred studies sweet? Such distribution of himself to us Was Phoebus' choice; thou hast thy gift,[735] and I Mine also, and between us we receive, Father and son, the whole inspiring god.

[735] Milton's father was well skilled in music.

The following effusion of filial feeling is as honourable to the discernment and liberality of the parent, as it is expressive of the gratitude of the son.

... Thou never bad'st me tread The beaten path and broad, that leads right on To opulence, nor did'st condemn thy son To the insipid clamours of the bar, To laws voluminous and ill observ'd; But, wishing to enrich me more, to fill My mind with treasure, led'st me far away From city-din to deep retreats, to banks And streams Aonian, and, with free consent, Did'st place me happy at Apollo's side. I speak not now, on more important themes Intent, of common benefits, and such As nature bids, but of thy larger gifts, My father! who, when I had open'd once The stores of Roman rhetoric, and learn'd The full-ton'd language of the eloquent Greeks, Whose lofty music grac'd the lips of Jove, Thyself did'st counsel me to add the flow'rs, That Gallia boasts, those too, with which the smooth Italian his degen'rate speech adorns, That witnesses his mixture with the Goth; And Palestine's prophetic songs divine.

We delight in witnessing the exuberance of manly and generous feeling in a son towards a parent, entitled by kind offices to his gratitude, and therefore transcribe the following passage.

Go now, and gather dross, ye sordid minds, That covet it; what could my father more? What more could Jove himself, unless he gave His own abode, the heaven in which he reigns? More eligible gifts than these were not Apollo's to his son, had they been safe, As they were insecure, who made the boy The world's vice-luminary, bade him rule The radiant chariot of the day, and bind To his young brows his own all-dazzling wreath. I therefore, although last and least my place Among the learned, in the laurel grove Will hold, and where the conqu'ror's ivy twines, Henceforth exempt from the unletter'd throng Profane, nor even to be seen by such. Away then, sleepless Care, Complaint, away! And Envy, with thy "jealous leer malign!" Nor let the monster Calumny shoot forth Her venom'd tongue at me. Detested foes! Ye all are impotent against my peace, For I am privileg'd, and bear my breast Safe, and too high for your viperean wound.

He thus beautifully concludes this affecting tribute of filial gratitude.

But thou, my father! since to render thanks Equivalent, and to requite by deeds Thy liberality, exceeds my power, Suffice it, that I thus record thy gifts, And bear them treasur'd in a grateful mind! Ye too, the favourite pastime of my youth, My voluntary numbers, if ye dare To hope longevity, and to survive Your master's funeral, not soon absorb'd In the oblivious Lethæan gulf, Shall to futurity perhaps convey This theme, and by these praises of my sire Improve the fathers of a distant age!

We subjoin Hayley's remark on this poem, in Cowper's edition of Milton.

"These verses are founded on one of the most interesting subjects that language can display, the warmth and felicity of strong reciprocal kindness between a father and a son, not only united by the most sacred tie of nature, but still more endeared to each other by the happy cultivation of honourable and congenial arts. The sublime description of poetry, and the noble and graceful portrait, which the author here exhibits of his own mental character, may be said to render this splendid poem the prime jewel in a coronet of variegated gems."

We extract the following passages from the remarks and notes in Cowper's Milton, as exhibiting the manner in which he executed this portion of his labours.