ment. But it is difficult to adjust opposite claims to the satisfaction of all parties. I have done my best, and must leave it to your candour to put a just interpretation upon all that has passed, and to give me credit for it, as a certain truth, that whatever seeming defects, in point of attention and attachment to you, my conduct on this occasion may have appeared to have been chargeable with, I am in reality as clear of all real ones as you would wish to find me.

I send you enclosed, in the first place, a copy of the advertisement to the reader, which accounts for my title, not otherwise easily accounted for-secondly, what is called an argument, or a summary of the contents of each book, more circumstantial and diffuse by far than that which I have sent to the press. It will give you a pretty accurate acquaintance with my matter, though the tenons and mortices by which the several passages are connected and let into each other cannot be explained in a syllabus-and lastly, an extract as you desired. The subject of it I am sure will please you, and as I have admitted into my description no images but what are scriptural, and have aimed as exactly as I could at the plain and simple sublimity of the scripture language, I have hopes the manner of it may please you too. As far as the numbers and diction are concerned it may serve pretty well for a sample of the whole; but the subjects being so various, no single passage can in all respects be a specimen of the book at large.

My principal purpose is to allure the reader by character, by scenery, by imagery, and such poetical embellishments, to the reading of what may profit him. Subordinately to this, to combat that predilection in favour of a metropolis that beggars and exhausts the country, by evacuating it of all its principal inhabitants; and collaterally, and as far as is consistent with this double intention, to have a stroke at vice, vanity, and folly, wherever I find them-I have not spared the universities. A letter which appeared in the 'General Evening Post' of Saturday, said to have been received by a general officer, and by him sent to the press as worthy of public notice, and which has all the appearance of authenticity, would alone justify the severest censures of those bodies, if any such justification were wanted. By way of supplement to what I have written on this subject, I have added a poem, called Tirocinium,' which is in rhyme. It treats of the scandalous relaxation of discipline that obtains in almost all schools universally, but especially in the largest, which are so negligent in the article of morals, that boys are debauched in general the moment they are capable of being so. It recommends the office of tutor to the father, where there is no real impediment; the expedient of a domestic tutor where there is; and the disposal of boys into the hands of a respectable country clergyman, who limits his attention to two, in all cases where they cannot conveniently be educated at home. Mr. Unwin happily affording me an instance in point, the poem is inscribed to him. You will now, I hope, command your hunger to be patient, and

be satisfied with the luncheon that I send till dinner comes. That piecemeal perusal of the work, sheet by sheet, would be so disadvantageous to the work itself, and therefore so uncomfortable to me, that I dare say you will waive your desire of it. A poem, thus disjointed, cannot possibly be fit for any body's inspection but the author's.

Tully's rule-" Nulla dies sine linea"-will make a volume in less time than one would suppose. I adhered to it so rigidly, that though more than once I found three lines as many as I had time to compass, still I wrote; and finding occasionally, and as it might happen, a more fluent vein, the abundance of one day made me amends for the barrenness of another. But I do not mean to write blank verse again. Not having the music of rhyme, it requires so close an attention to the pause, and the cadence, and such a peculiar mode of expression, as to render it, to me at least, the most difficult species of poetry that I have ever meddled with.

I am obliged to you, and to Mr. Bacon, for your kind remembrance of me, when you meet. without the finest feelings; and ings is, and must be, amiable.

No artist can excel, as he does, every man that has the finest feel

Adieu, my dear friend!

Affectionately yours,

W. C.

CLXXVI. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Nov. 29, 1784.

I am happy that you are pleased, and accept it as an earnest that I shall not, at least, disgust the public. For though I know your partiality to me, I know at the same time with what laudable tenderness you feel for your own reputation, and that for the sake of that most delicate part of your property, though you would not criticise me with an unfriendly and undue severity, you would, however, beware of being satisfied too hastily, and with no warrantable cause of being so. I called you the tutor of your two sons, in contemplation of the certainty of that event—it is a fact in suspense, not in fiction.

My principal errand to you now is, to give you information on the following subject. The moment Mr. Newton knew (and I took care that he should learn it first from me) that I had communicated to you what I had concealed from him, and that you were my authorship's go-between with Johnson on this occasion, he sent me a most friendly letter indeed, but one in every line of which I could hear the soft murmurs of something like mortification, that could not be entirely suppressed. It contained nothing, however, that you yourself would have blamed, or that I had not every reason to consider as evidence of his regard to me. He concluded the subject with desiring to know something of my plan, to be favoured with an extract, by way of specimen, or (which he should like better

still) with wishing me to order Johnson to send him a proof as fast as they were printed off. Determining not to accede to this last request, for many reasons (but especially because I would no more show my poem piecemeal, than I would my house if I had one; the merits of the structure, in either case, being equally liable to suffer by such a partial view of it), I have endeavoured to compromise the difference between us, and to satisfy him without disgracing myself. The proof sheets I have absolutely, though civilly refused: but I have sent him a copy of the arguments of each book, more dilated and circumstantial than those inserted in the work; and to these I have added an extract as he desired; selecting, as most suited to his taste-The view of the restoration of all things-which you recollect to have seen near the end of the last book. I hold it necessary to tell you this, lest, if you should call upon him, he should startle you by discovering a degree of information upon the subject which you could not otherwise know how to reconcile, or to account for.

You have executed your commissions à merveille. We not only approve, but admire: no apology was wanting for the balance struck at the bottom, which we accounted rather a beauty than a deformity. Pardon a poor poet, who cannot speak even of pounds, shillings, and pence, but in his own way.

I have read Lunardi with pleasure. He is a lively, sensible young fellow, and I suppose a very favourable sample of the Italians. When I look at his picture, I can fancy that I see in him that good sense and courage, that no doubt were legible in the face of a young Roman two thousand years ago.

Your affectionate

CLXXVII.-TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

W. C.

Dec. 13, 1784.

Having imitated no man, I may reasonably hope that I shall not incur the disadvantage of a comparison with my betters. Milton's manner was peculiar; so is Thomson's. He that should write like either of them would, in my judgment, deserve the name of a copyist, but not a poet. A judicious and sensible reader, therefore, like yourself, will not say that my manner is not good because it does not resemble theirs, but will rather consider what it is in itself. Blank verse is susceptible of a much greater diversification of manner than verse in rhyme; and why the modern writers of it have all thought proper to cast their numbers alike I know not. Certainly it was not necessity that compelled them to it. I flatter myself, however, that I have avoided that sameness with others which would entitle me to nothing but a share in one common oblivion with them all. It is possible, that, as a Reviewer of my former volume found cause to say that he knew not to what class of

R

writers to refer me, the Reviewer of this, whoever he shall be, may see occasion to remark the same singularity. At any rate, though as little apt to be sanguine as most nien, and more prone to fear and despond than to overrate my own productions, I am persuaded that I shall not forfeit any thing by this volume that I gained by the last. As to the title, I take it to be the best that is to be had. It is not possible that a book including such a variety of subjects, and in which no particular one is predominant, should find a title adapted to them all. In such a case, it seemed almost necessary to accommodate the name to the incident that gave birth to the poem; nor does it appear to me that because I performed more than my task, therefore the Task' is not a suitable title. A house would still be a house, though the builder of it should make it ten times as big as he at first intended. I might, indeed, following the example of the Sunday newsmonger, call it the Olio.' But I should do myself wrong; for though it have much variety, it has, I trust, no confusion.

For the same reason none of the interior titles apply themselves to the contents at large of that book to which they belong. They are, every one of them, taken either from the leading (I should say the introductory) passage of that particular book, or from that which makes the most conspicuous figure in it. Had I set off with a design to write upon a gridiron, and had I actually written near two hundred lines upon that utensil as I have upon the Sofa, the gridiron should have been my title. But the Sofa being, as I may say, the starting-post from which I addressed myself to the long race that I soon conceived a design to run, it acquired a just pre-eminence in my account, and was very worthily advanced to the titular honour it enjoys, its right being at least so far a good one, that no word in the language could pretend a better.

The Time-piece appears to me (though by some accident the import of that title has escaped you) to have a degree of propriety beyond most of them. The book to which it belongs is intended to strike the hour that gives notice of approaching judgment; and dealing pretty largely in the signs of the times, seems to be denominated as it is with a sufficient degree of accommodation to the subject.

As to the word worm, it is the very appellation, which Milton himself, in a certain passage of the Paradise Lost, gives to the serpent. Not having the book at hand I cannot now refer to it, but I am sure of the fact. I am mistaken too if Shakspeare's Cleopatra do not call the asp, by which she thought fit to destroy herself, by the But, not having read the play these five and twenty years, I will not affirm it. They are, however, without all doubt, convertible terms; a worm is a small serpent, and a serpent is a large worm. And when an epithet significant of the most terrible species of those creatures is adjoined, the idea is surely sufficiently

same name.

ascertained. No animal of the vermicular or serpentine kind is crested but the most formidable of all.

CLXXVIII.-TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Dec. 18, 1784.

I condole with you that you had the trouble to ascend St. Paul's in vain, but at the same the same time congratulate you that you escaped an ague. I should be very well pleased to have a fair prospect of a balloon under sail, with a philosopher or two on board; but at the same time should be very sorry to expose myself for any length of time to the rigour of the upper regions at this season for the sake of it. The travellers themselves, I suppose, are secured from all injuries of the weather by that fervency of spirit and agitation of mind which must needs accompany them in their flight; advantages which the more composed and phlegmatic spectator is not equally possessed of.

The inscription of the poem is more your own affair than any other person's. You have, therefore, an undoubted right to fashion it to your mind, nor have I the least objection to the slight alteration that you have made in it. I inserted what you have erased, for a reason that was perhaps rather chimerical than solid. I feared, however, that the Reviewers, or some of my sagacious readers, not more merciful than they, might suspect that there was a secret design in the wind; and that author and friend had consulted in what manner author might introduce friend to public notice, as a clergyman every way qualified to entertain a pupil or two, if peradventure any gentleman of fortune were in want of a tutor for his children. I therefore added the words-" And of his two sons only"-by way of insinuating, that you are perfectly satisfied with your present charge, and that you do not wish for more; thus meaning to obviate an illiberal construction, which we are both of us incapable of deserving. But the same caution not having appeared to you to be necessary, I am very willing and ready to suppose that it is not so.

I intended in my last to have given you my reasons for the compliment that I paid Bishop Bagot, lest, knowing that I have no personal connexion with him, you should suspect me of having done it rather too much at a venture. In the first place, then, I wished the world to know that I have no objection to a bishop, quià bishop. In the second place, the brothers were all five my schoolfellows, and very amiable and valuable boys they were. Thirdly, Lewis, the bishop, had been rudely and coarsely treated in the Monthly Review, on account of a sermon which appeared to me, when I read their extract from it, to deserve the highest commendations, as exhibiting explicit proof of both his good sense and his unfeigned piety. For these causes, me thereunto moving, I felt