perhaps the reverse of it is found; tones so dismal, as to make woe itself more insupportable, and to acuminate even despair. But my paper admonishes me in good time to draw the reins, and to check the descent of my fancy into deeps with which she is but too familiar. Our best love attends you both, with yours. CLXVIII.-TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. MY DEAR WILLIAM, W. C. Oct. 2, 1784. A poet can but ill spare time for prose. The truth is, I am in haste to finish my transcript that you may receive it time enough to give it a leisurely reading before you go to town; which, whether I shall be able to accomplish, is at present uncertain. I have the whole punctuation to settle, which in blank verse is of the last importance, and of a species peculiar to that composition; for I know no use of points unless to direct the voice, the management of which, in the reading of blank verse, being more difficult than in the reading of any other poetry, requires perpetual hints and notices, to regulate the inflections, cadences, and pauses. This, however, is an affair, that in spite of grammarians must be left pretty much ad libitum scriptoris. For I suppose every author points according to his own reading. If I can send the parcel to the waggon by one o'clock next Wednesday, you will have it on Saturday the 9th. But this is more than I expect. Perhaps I shall not be able to dispatch it till the 11th, in which case it will not reach you till the 13th. I rather think that the latter of these two periods will obtain, because, besides the punctuation, I have the argument of each book to transscribe. Add to this, that in writing for the printer, I am forced to write my best, which makes slow work. The motto of the whole is-Fit surculus arbor. If you can put the author's name under it, do so; if not, it must go without one, for I know not to whom to ascribe it. It was a motto taken by a certain prince of Orange, in the year 1733, but not to a poem of his own writing, or indeed to any poem at all, but as I think to a medal. Mr. is a Cornish member; but for what place in Cornwall I know not. All I know of him is, that I saw him once clap his two hands upon a rail, meaning to leap over it; but he did not think the attempt a safe one, and therefore took them off again. He was in company with Mr. Throckmorton. With that gentleman we drank chocolate, since I wrote last. The occasion of our visit was, as usual, a balloon. Your mother invited her and I him, and they promised to return the visit, but have not yet performed. Tout le monde se trouvoit là, as you may suppose; among the rest, Mrs. W. She was driven to the door by her son, a boy of seventeen, in a phaeton, drawn by four horses from Lilliput. This is an ambiguous expression, and should what I write now be legible a thousand years hence, might puzzle commentators. Be it known, therefore, to the Alduses, and the Stephenses of ages yet to come, that I do not mean to affirm that Mrs. W- - herself came from Lilliput that morning, or indeed that she ever was there; but merely to describe the horses, as being so diminutive, that they might be, with propriety, said to be Lilliputian. The privilege of franking having been so cropped, I know not in what manner I and my bookseller are to settle the conveyance of proof sheets hither and back again. They must travel, I imagine, by coach, a large quantity of them at a time; for, like other authors, I find myself under a poetical necessity of being frugal. We love you all, jointly and separately, as usual. W. C. I have not seen, nor shall see, the Dissenter's answer to Mr. Newton, unless you can furnish me with it. CLXIX.-TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. Oct. 9, 1784. MY DEAR FRIEND, The pains you have taken to disengage our correspondence from the expenses with which it was threatened, convincing me that my letters, trivial as they are, are yet acceptable to you, encourage me to observe my usual punctuality. You complain of unconnected thoughts. I believe there is not a head in the world but might utter the same complaint, and that all would do so, were they all as attentive to their own vagaries, and as honest as yours. The description of your meditations at least suits mine: perhaps I can go a step beyond you, upon the same ground, and assert with the strictest truth, that I not only do not think with connexion, but that I frequently do not think at all. I am much mistaken if I do not often catch myself napping in this way; for when I ask myself what was the last idea (as the ushers at Westminster ask an idle boy what was the last word), I am not able to answer, but, like the boy in question, am obliged to stare and say nothing. This may be a very unphilosophical account of myself, and may clash very much with the general opinion of the learned, that the soul being an active principle, and her activity consisting in thought, she must consequently always think. But pardon me, Messieurs les Philosophes, there are moments when, if I think at all, I am utterly unconscious of doing so, and the thought and the consciousness of it seem to me at least, who am no philosopher, to be inseparable from each other. Perhaps, however, we may both be right; and if you will grant me that I do not always think, I will in return concede to you the activity you contend for, and will qualify the difference between us by supposing, that though the soul be in herself an active principle, the influence of her present union with a principle that is not such makes her often dormant, suspends her operations, and affects her with a sort of deliquium, in which she suffers a temporary loss of all her functions. I have related to you my experience truly, and without disguise; you must therefore either admit my assertion, that the soul does not necessarily always act, or deny that mine is a human soul; a negative that I am sure you will not easily prove. So much for a dispute which I little thought of being engaged in to-day. man Last night I had a letter from Lord Dartmouth. It was to apprize me of the safe arrival of Cook's last voyage, which he was so kind as to lend me, in St. James's Square. The reading of those volumes afforded me much amusement, and I hope some instruction. No observation, however, forced itself upon me with more violence than one that I could not help making on the death of Captain Cook. God is a jealous God, and at Owhyhee the poor was content to be worshipped. From that moment, the remarkable interposition of Providence in his favour was converted into an opposition that thwarted all his purposes. He left the scene of his deification, but was driven back to it by a most violent storm, in which he suffered more than in any that had preceded it. When he departed, he left his worshippers still infatuated with an idea of his godship, consequently well-disposed to serve him. At his return he found them sullen, distrustful, and mysterious. A trifling theft was committed, which, by a blunder of his own in pursuing the thief after the property had been restored, was magnified to an affair of the last importance. One of their favourite chiefs was killed too by a blunder. Nothing, in short, but blunder and mistake attended him, till he fell breathless into the water, and then all was smooth again. The world, indeed, will not take notice, or see that the dispensation bore evident marks of divine displeasure; but a mind, I think, in any degree spiritual cannot overlook them. We know from Truth itself, that the death of Herod was for a similar offence. But Herod was in no sense a believer in God, nor had enjoyed half the opportunities with which our poor countryman had been favoured. It may be urged perhaps that he was in jest, that he meant nothing but his own amusement, and that of his companions; I doubt it. He knows little of the heart, who does not know that even in a sensible man it is flattered by every species of exaltation. But be it so that he was in sport; it was not humane, to say no worse of it, to sport with the ignorance of his friends, to mock their simplicity, to humour and acquiesce in their blind credulity. Besides, though a stock or stone may be worshipped blameless, a baptized man may not. He knows what he does, and by suffering such honours to be paid him, incurs the guilt of sacrilege. *Note by the Editor. * Having enjoyed, in the year 1772, the pleasure of conversing with this illustrious seaman, on board his own ship, the Resolution, I cannot pass the present letter without observing, that I am persuaded my friend Cowper utterly misapprehended the behaviour of Captain Cook in the affair alluded to. From the little personal acquaintance which I had myself with this humane and truly christian navigator, and from the whole tenor of his life, I cannot believe it possible for him to have acted under any circumstances with such impious arrogance as might appear offensive in the eyes of the Almighty, We are glad that you are so happy in your church, in your society, and in all your connexions. I have not left myself room to say any thing of the love we feel for you. Yours, my dear friend, W. C. CLXX. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. MY DEAR WILLIAM, Oct. 10, 1784. I send you four quires of verse, which having sent I shall dismiss from my thoughts, and think no more of till I see them in print. I have not, after all, found time or industry enough to give the last hand to the points. I believe, however, they are not very erroneous; though in so long a work, and in a work that requires nicety in this particular, some inaccuracies will escape: where you find any, you will oblige me by correcting them. In some passages, especially in the second book, you will observe me very satirical. Writing on such subjects I could not be otherwise. I can write nothing without aiming at least at usefulness. It were beneath my years to do it, and still more dishonourable to my religion. I know that a reformation of such abuses as I have censured is not to be expected from the efforts of a poet; but to contemplate the world, its follies, its vices, its indifference to duty, and its strenuous attachment to what is evil, and not to reprehend, were to approve it. From this charge, at least, I shall be clear; for I have neither tacitly nor expressly flattered either its characters or its customs. I have paid one and only one compliment, which was so justly due that I did not know how to withhold it, especially having so fair an occasion (I forget myself, there is another in the first book to Mr. Throckmorton), but the compliment I mean is to Mr. It is, however, so managed, that nobody but himself can make the application, and you to whom I disclose the secret; a delicacy on my part which so much delicacy on his obliged me to the observance of! What there is of a religious cast in the volume I have thrown towards the end of it, for two reasons; first, that I might not revolt the reader at his entrance; and, secondly, that my best impressions might be made last. Were I to write as many volumes as Lope de Vega, or Voltaire, not one of them would be without this tincture. If the world like it not, so much the worse for them. I make all the concessions I can, that I may please them; but I will not please them at the expense of my conscience. My descriptions are all from nature-not one of them secondhanded. My delineations of the heart are from my own experience -not one of them borrowed from books, or in the least degree conjectural. In my numbers, which I varied as much as I could (for blank verse without variety of numbers is no better than bladder and string), I have imitated nobody, though sometimes perhaps there may be an apparent resemblance; because at the same time that I would not imitate, I have not affectedly differed. If the work cannot boast a regular plan (in which respect, however, I do not think it altogether indefensible), it may yet boast that the reflections are naturally suggested always by the preceding passage, and that, except the fifth book, which is rather of a political aspect, the whole has one tendency-to discountenance the modern enthusiasm after a London life, and to recommend rural ease and leisure, as friendly to the cause of piety and virtue. If it pleases you I shall be happy, and collect from your pleasure in it an omen of its general acceptance. Yours, my dear friend, CLXXI. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. MY DEAR WILLIAM, W. C. Oct. 20, 1784. Your letter has relieved me from some anxiety, and given me a good deal of positive pleasure. I have faith in your judgment, and an implicit confidence in the sincerity of your approbation. The writing of so long a poem is a serious business, and the author must know little of his own heart who does not in some degree suspect himself of partiality to his own production; and who is he that would not be mortified by the discovery, that he had written five thousand lines in vain? The poem, however, which you have in hand, will not of itself make a volume so large as the last, or as a bookseller would wish. I say this, because when I had sent Johnson five thousand verses, he applied for a thousand more. Two years since, I began a piece which grew to the length of two hundred, and there stopped: I have lately resumed it, and, I believe, shall finish it. But the subject is fruitful, and will not be comprised in a smaller compass than seven or eight hundred verses. It turns on the question, whether an education at school or at home be preferable, and I shall give the preference to the latter. I mean that it shall pursue the track of the former; that is to say, that it shall visit Stock in its way to publication. My design also is to inscribe it to you; but you must see it first; and if, after seeing it, you should have any objection, though it should be no bigger than the tittle of an i, I will deny myself that pleasure, and find no fault with your refusal. I have not been without thoughts of adding John Gilpin' at the tail of all. He has made a good deal of noise in the world, and perhaps it may not be amiss to show, that though I write generally with a serious intention, I know how to be occasionally merry. The Critical Reviewers charged me with an attempt at humour. John, having been more celebrated upon the score of humour than most pieces that have appeared in modern days, may serve to exonerate me from the imputation: but in this article I am entirely under your judgment, and mean to be set down by it. All these together will make an octavo like the last. I should have told you that |