an object of them. By the way, you cannot have a book at the time you mention; I have lived a fortnight or more in expectation of the last sheet, which is not yet arrived. You have already furnished John's memory with by far the greatest part of what a parent would wish to store it with. If all that is merely trivial, and all that has an immoral tendency were expunged from our English poets, how would they shrink, and how would some of them completely vanish. I believe there are some of Dryden's Fables which he would find very entertaining; they are for the most part fine compositions, and not above his apprehension; but Dryden has written few things that are not blotted here and there with an unchaste allusion, so that you must pick his way for him, lest he should tread in the dirt. You did not mention Milton's 'Allegro' and' Penseroso,' which I remember being so charmed with when I was a boy, that I was never weary of them. There are even passages in the paradisaical part of the Paradise Lost,' which he might study with advantage. And to teach him, as you can, to deliver some of the fine orations made in the Pandemonium,' and those between Satan, Ithuriel, and Zephon, with emphasis, dignity, and propriety, might be of great use to him hereafter. The sooner the ear is formed, and the organs of speech are accustomed to the various inflections of the voice which the rehearsal of those passages demands, the better. I should think, too, that Thomson's Seasons' might afford him some useful lessons. At least they would have a tendency to give his mind an observing and a philosophical turn. I do not forget that he is but a child; but I remember, that he is a child favoured with talents superior to his years. We were much pleased with his remarks on your almsgiving, and doubt not but it will be verified with respect to the two guineas you sent us, which have made four Christian people happy. Ships I have none, nor have touched a pencil these three years: if ever I take it up again, which I rather suspect I shall not (the employment requiring stronger eyes than mine), it shall be at John's service. Yours, my dear friend, W. C. XC.-TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. Feb. 2, 1782. MY DEAR FRIEND, Though I value your correspondence highly on its own account, I certainly value it the more in consideration of the many difficulties under which you carry it on. Having so many other engagements, and engagements so much more worthy your attention, I ought to esteem it, as I do, a singular proof of your friendship, that you so often make an opportunity to bestow a letter upon me; and this, not only because mine, which I write in a state of mind not very favourable to religious contemplations, are never worth your reading; but especially because, while you consult my gratification and en deavour to amuse my melancholy, your thoughts are forced out of the only channel in which they delight to flow, and constrained into another so different and so little interesting to a mind like yours, that but for me, and for my sake, they would perhaps never visit it. Though I should be glad, therefore, to hear from you every week, I do not complain that I enjoy that privilege but once in a fortnight, but am rather happy to be indulged in it so often. I thank you for the jog you gave Johnson's elbow, communicated from him to the printer; it has produced me two more sheets, and two more will bring the business, I suppose, to a conclusion. I sometimes feel such a perfect indifference, with respect to the public opinion of my book, that I am ready to flatter myself no censure of reviewers, or other critical readers, would occasion me the smallest disturbance. But not feeling myself constantly possessed of this desirable apathy, I am sometimes apt to suspect that it is not altogether sincere, or at least that I may lose it just in the moment when I may happen most to want it. Be it, however, as it may, I am still persuaded that it is not in their power to mortify me much. I have intended well and performed to the best of my ability-so far was right, and this is a boast of which they cannot rob me. If they condemn my poetry, I must even say with Cervantes, "Let them do better if they can!"-if my doctrine, they judge that which they do not understand; I shall except to the jurisdiction of the court and plead Coram non judice. Even Horace could say he should neither be the plumper for the praise, nor the leaner for the condemnation of his reader; and it will prove me wanting to myself indeed, if, supported by so many sublimer considerations than he was master of, I cannot sit loose to popularity, which, like the wind, bloweth where it listeth, and is equally out of our command. If you, and two or three more such as you, say Well done!" it ought to give me more contentment, than if I could earn Churchill's laurels, and by the same means. I wrote to Lord Dartmouth to apprize him of my intended present, and have received a most affectionate and obliging answer. I am rather pleased that you have adopted other sentiments respecting our intended present to the critical doctor. I allow him to be a man of gigantic talents, and most profound learning, nor have I any doubts about the universality of his knowledge. But by what I have seen of his animadversions on the poets, I feel myself much disposed to question, in many instances, either his candour or his taste. He finds fault too often, like a man that, having sought it very industriously, is at last obliged to stick it on a pin's point, and look at it through a microscope; and I am sure I could easily convict him of having denied many beauties, and overlooked more. Whether his judgment be in itself defective, or whether it be warped by collateral considerations, a writer upon such subjects as I have chosen would probably find but little mercy at his hands. No winter since we knew Olney has kept us more confined than the present. We have not more than three times escaped into the fields since last autumn. Man, a changeable creature in himself, seems to subsist best in a state of variety, as his proper element-a melancholy man, at least, is apt to grow sadly weary of the same walks and the same pales, and to find that the same scene will suggest the same thoughts perpetually. Though I have spoken of the utility of changes, we neither feel nor wish for any in our friendships, and consequently stand just where we did with respect to your whole self. Yours, my dear Sir, XCI.-TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. W. C. Feb. 16, 1782. Caraccioli says "There is something very bewitching in authorship, and that he who has once written will write again." It may be so—I can subscribe to the former part of his assertion from my own experience, having never found an amusement, among the many I have been obliged to have recourse to, that so well answered the purpose for which I used it. The quieting and composing effect of it was such, and so totally absorbed have I sometimes been in my rhyming occupation, that neither the past nor the future (those themes which to me are so fruitful in regret at other times) had any longer a share in my contemplation. For this reason I wish, and have often wished since the fit left me, that it would seize me again; but hitherto I have wished it in vain. I see no want of subjects, but I feel a total disability to discuss them. Whether it is thus with other writers or not, I am ignorant; but I should suppose my case in this respect a little peculiar. The voluminous writers, at least, whose vein of fancy seems always to have been rich in proportion to their occasions, cannot have been so unlike, and so unequal to themselves. There is this difference between my poetship and the generality of them-they have been ignorant how much they have stood indebted to an almighty power for the exercise of those talents they have supposed their own. Whereas I know, and know most perfectly, and am perhaps to be taught it to the last, that my power to think, whatever it be, and consequently my power to compose, is, as much as my outward form, afforded to me by the same hand that makes me in any respect to differ from a brute. This lesson, if not constantly inculcated, might perhaps be forgotten, or at least too slightly remembered. W. C. The following cursory remarks of Cowper appear highly worthy of preservation. They were written on separate scraps of paper, without any title, and may find perhaps their most suitable place as a sequel to the letter in which he quoted the writer whose character he has here sketched at full length, and with a masterly hand. "Caraccioli appears to me to have been a wise man, and I believe he was a good man in a religious sense. But his wisdom and his goodness both savour more of the Philosopher than the Christian. In the latter of these characters he seems defective principally in this -that instead of sending his reader to God as an inexhaustible source of happiness to his intelligent creatures, and exhorting him to cultivate communion with his Maker, he directs him to his own heart, and to the contemplation of his own faculties and powers, as a neverfailing spring of comfort and content. He speaks even of the natural man as made in the image of God, and supposes a resemblance of God to consist in a sort of independent self-sufficing and self-complacent felicity, which can hardly be enjoyed without the forfeiture of all humility, and a flat denial of some of the most important truths in Scripture. "As a Philosopher, he refines to an excess, and his arguments, instead of convincing others, if pushed as far as they would go, would convict him of absurdity himself. When, for instance, he would depreciate earthly riches by telling us that gold and diamonds are only matter modified in a particular way, and thence concludes them not more valuable in themselves than the dust under our feet, his consequence is false, and his cause is hurt by the assertion. It is that very modification that gives them both a beauty and a value-a value and a beauty recognized in Scripture, and by the universal consent of all well-informed and civilized nations. It is in vain to tell mankind that gold and dirt are equal, so long as their experience convinces them of the contrary. It is necessary, therefore, to distinguish between the thing itself and the abuse of it. Wealth is in fact a blessing when honestly acquired, and conscientiously employed; and when otherwise, the man is to be blamed, and not his treasure. How does the Scripture combat the vice of covetousness? not by asserting that gold is only earth exhibiting itself to us under a particular modification, and therefore not worth seeking; but by telling us that covetousness is idolatry, that the love of money is the root of all evil, that it has occasioned in some even the shipwreck of their faith, and is always in whomsoever it obtains an abomination. A man might have said to Caraccioli, Give me your purse full of ducats, and I will give you my old wig; they are both composed of the same matter under different modifications. What could the Philosopher have replied? he must have made the exchange, or have denied his own principles. "Again, when speaking of sumptuous edifices, he calls a palace an assemblage of sticks and stones, which a puff of wind may demolish, or a spark of fire consume; and thinks he has reduced a magnificent building and a cottage to the same level, when he has told us that the latter viewed through an optic glass may be made to appear as large as the former, and that the former seen through the same glass inverted may be reduced to the pitiful dimensions of the latter has he indeed carried his point? is he not rather imposing on the judgment of his readers, just as the glass would impose upon : their senses? How is it possible to deduce a substantial argument in this case, from an acknowledged deception of the sight? The objects continue what they were; the palace is still a palace, and the cottage is not at all ennobled in reality, though we contemplate them ever so long through an illusive medium. There is, in fact, a real difference between them, and such a one as the Scripture itself takes very emphatical notice of, assuring us that in the last day much shall be required of him to whom much was given; that every man shall be then considered as a steward, and render a strict account of the things with which he was intrusted. This consideration, indeed, may make the dwellers in palaces tremble, who, living for the most part in the continued abuse of their talents, squandering and wasting, and spending upon themselves their Master's treasure, will have reason enough to envy the cottager, whose accounts will be more easily settled. But to tell mankind that a palace and a hovel are the same thing, is to affront their senses, to contradict their knowledge, and to disgust their understandings. "Herein seems to consist one of the principal differences between Philosophy and Scripture, or the wisdom of Man and the wisdom of God. The former endeavours, indeed, to convince the judgment, but it frequently is obliged to have recourse to unlawful means, such as misrepresentation and the play of fancy. The latter addresses itself to the judgment likewise, but it carries its point by awakening the conscience; by enlightening the understanding, and by appealing to our own experience. As philosophy therefore cannot make a Christian, so a Christian ought to take care that he be not too much a philosopher. It is mere folly instead of wisdom to forego those arguments, and to shut our eyes upon those motives, which truth itself has pointed out to us, and which alone are adequate to the purpose; and to busy ourselves in making vain experiments on the strength of others of our own invention. In fact, the world, which, however it has dared to controvert the authenticity of Scripture, has never been able to impeach the wisdom of its precepts, or the reasonableness of its exhortations, has sagacity enough to see through the fallacy of such reasonings, and will rather laugh at the sage who declares war against matter of fact, than become proselytes to his opinion." XCII.-TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. Feb. 24, 1782. MY DEAR FRIEND, If I should receive a letter from you to-morrow, you must still remember, that I am not in your debt, having paid you by anticipation. Knowing that you take an interest in my publication, and that you have waited for it with some impatience, I write to inform you that if it is possible for a printer to be punctual, I shall come forth on the 1st of March. I have ordered two copies to Stock; one for Mr. John Unwin.-It is possible, after all, that my |