a separation that of late seemed likely to last for life, we shall meet each other as alive from the dead; and for my own part, I can truly say, that I have not a friend in the other world whose resurrection would give me greater pleasure. I am truly happy, my dear, in having pleased you with what you have seen of my Homer. I wish that all English readers had your unsophisticated, or rather unadulterated taste, and could relish simplicity like you. But I am well aware that in this respect I am under a disadvantage, and that many, especially many ladies, missing many turns and prettinesses of expression that they have admired in Pope, will account my translation in those particulars defective. But I comfort myself with the thought, that in reality it is no defect on the contrary, that the want of all such embellishments as do not belong to the original will be one of its principal merits with persons indeed capable of relishing Homer. He is the best poet that ever lived for many reasons, but for none more than for that majestic plainness that distinguishes him from all others. As an accomplished person moves gracefully without thinking of it, in like manner the dignity of Homer seems to cost him no labour. It was natural to him to say great things, and to say them well, and little ornaments were beneath his notice. If Maty, my dearest Cousin, should return to you my copy with any such strictures as may make it necessary for me to see it again before it goes to Johnson, in that case you shall send it to me, otherwise to Johnson immediately; for he writes me word he wishes his friend to go to work upon it as soon as possible. When you come, my dear, we will hang all these critics together, for they have worried me without remorse or conscience-at least one of them has. I had actually murdered more than a few of the best lines in the specimen, in compliance with his requisitions, but plucked up my courage at last, and in the very last opportunity that I had, recovered them to life again by restoring the original reading. At the same time I readily confess that the specimen is the better for all this discipline its author has undergone, but then it has been more indebted for its improvement to that pointed accuracy of examination, to which I was myself excited, than to any proposed amendments from Mr. Critic; for as sure as you are my Cousin, whom I long to see at Olney, so surely would he have done me irreparable mischief, if I would have given him leave. My friend Bagot writes to me in a most friendly strain, and calls loudly upon me for original poetry. When I shall have done with Homer, probably he will not call in vain. Having found the prime feather of a swan on the banks of the smug and silver Trent, he keeps it for me. Adieu, dear Cousin, W. C. I am sorry that the General has such indifferent health. He must not die. I can by no means spare a person so kind to me. CCIV. TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT. - Olney, Feb. 27, 1786. Alas! alas! my dear, dear friend, may God himself comfort you! I will not be so absurd as to attempt it. By the close of your letter it should seem, that in this hour of great trial he withholds not his consolations from you. I know by experience that they are neither few nor small; and though I feel for you as I never felt for man before, yet do I sincerely rejoice in this, that whereas there is but one true Comforter in the universe, under afflictions such as yours, you both know him and know where to seek him. I thought you a man the most happily mated that I had ever seen, and had great pleasure in your felicity. Pardon me, if now I feel a wish, that, short as my acquaintance was with her, I had never seen her. I should have mourned with you, but not as I do now. Mrs. Unwin sympathises with you also most sincerely, and you neither are, nor will be soon forgotten in such prayers as we can make at Olney. I will not detain you longer now, my poor afflicted friend, than to commit you to the tender mercy of God, and to bid you a sorrowful adieu ! Adieu! ever yours, CCV.-To LADY HESKETH. W. C. I MY DEAREST COUSIN, Olney, March 6, 1786. Your opinion has more weight with me than that of all the critics in the world; and, to give you a proof of it, I make you a concession that I would hardly have made to them all united. do not indeed absolutely covenant, promise, and agree, that I will discard all my elisions, but I hereby bind myself to dismiss as many of them, as, without sacrificing energy to sound, I can. It is incumbent upon me, in the mean time, to say something in justification of the few that I shall retain, that I may not seem a poet mounted rather on a mule than on Pegasus. In the first place, The is a barbarism. We are indebted for it to the Celts, or the Goths, or to the Saxons, or perhaps to them all. In the two best languages that ever were spoken, the Greek and the Latin, there is no similar incumbrance of expression to be found. Secondly, the perpetual use of it in our language is, to us miserable poets, attended with two great inconveniences. Our verse consisting only of ten syllables, it not unfrequently happens that a fifth part of a line is to be engrossed and necessarily too, unless elision prevents it, by this abominable intruder; and, which is worse in my account, open vowels are continually the consequence-The element-The air, &c. Thirdly, the French, who are equally with the English chargeable with barbarism in this particular, dispose of their Le and their La without ceremony, and always take care that they shall be absorbed both in verse and in prose in the vowel that immediately follows them. Fourthly, and I believe lastly (and for your sake I wish it may prove so), the practice of cutting short The is warranted by Milton, who, of all English poets that ever lived, had certainly the finest ear. Dr. Warton, indeed, has dared to say that he had a bad one; for which he deserves, as far as critical demerit can deserve it, to lose his own. I thought I had done, but there is a fifthly behind; and it is this, that the custom of abbreviating The belongs to the style in which, in my advertisement annexed to the specimen, I profess to write. The use of that style would have warranted me in the practice of much greater liberty of this sort than I ever intended to take. In perfect consistence with that style, I might say, I' th' tempest, I' th' door-way, &c., which, however, I would not allow myself to do, because I was aware that it would be objected to, and with reason. But it seems to me, for the causes above said, that when I shorten The before a vowel, or before wh, as in the line you mention, "Than th' whole broad Hellespont in all its parts," my licence is not equally exceptionable, because W, though he rank as a consonant in the word whole, is not allowed to announce himself to the ear; and h, is an aspirate. But as I said at the beginning, so say I still, I am most willing to conform myself to your very sensible observation, that it is necessary, if we would please, to consult the taste of our own day; neither would I have pelted you, my dearest cousin, with any part of this volley of good reasons, had I not designed them as an answer to those objections which, you say, you have heard from others. But I only mention them. Though satisfactory to myself, I waive them, and will allow to The his whole dimensions, whensoever it can be done. Thou only critic of my verse that is to be found in all the earth whom I love, what shall I say in answer to your own objection to that passage, Softly he plac'd his hand I can say neither more nor less than this, that when our dear friend, the General, sent me his opinion on the specimen, quoting those very words from it, he added: "With this part, I was particularly pleased: there is nothing in poetry more descriptive." Such were his very words. Taste, my dear, is various, there is nothing so various, and even between persons of the best taste there are diversities of opinion on the same subject, for which it is not possible to account. So much for these matters. You advise me to consult the General, and to confide in him. I follow your advice, and have done both. By the last post I asked his permission to send him the books of my. Homer, as fast as I should finish them off. I shall be glad of his remarks, and more glad than of any thing, to do that which I hope may be agreeable to him. They will of course pass into your hands before they are sent to Johnson. The quire that I sent is now in the hands of Johnson's friend. I intended to have told you in my last, but forgot it, that Johnson behaves very handsomely in the affair of my two volumes. He acts with a liberality not often found in persons of his occupation, and to mention it, when occasion calls me to it, is a justice due to him. I am very much pleased with Mr. Stanley's letter-several compliments were paid me on the subject of that first volume, by my own friends, but I do not recollect that I ever knew the opinion of a stranger about it before, whether favourable or otherwise: I only heard by a side wind, that it was very much read in Scotland, and more than here. Farewell, my dearest cousin, whom we expect; of whom we talk continually, and whom we continually long for. W. C. Your anxious wishes for my success delight me, and you may rest assured, my dear, that I have all the ambition on the subject that you can wish me to feel. I more than admire my author. I often stand astonished at his beauties. I am for ever amused with the translation of him, and I have received a thousand encourageThese are all so many happy omens, that, I hope, shall be verified by the event, ments. CCVI. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. MY DEAR FRIEND, you. March 13, 1786, I seem to be about to write to you, but I foresee that it will not be a letter, but a scrap that I shall send I could tell you things that, knowing how much you interest yourself in my success, I am sure would please you, but every moment of my leisure is necessarily spent at Troy. I am revising my translation, and bestowing on it more labour than at first. At the repeated solicitation of General Cowper, who had doubtless irrefragable reason on his side, I have put my book into the hands of the most extraordinary critic that I have ever heard of. He is a Swiss, has an accurate knowledge of English, and for his knowledge of Homer has, I verily believe, no fellow. Johnson recommended him to me. I am to send him the quires as fast as I finish them off, and the first is now in his hands. I have the comfort to be able to tell you that he is very much pleased with what he has seen. Johnson wrote to me lately on purpose to tell me so. Things having taken this turn, I fear that I must beg a release from my engagement to put the MS. into your hands. I am bound to print as soon as three hundred shall have subscribed, and consequently have not an hour to spare. People generally love to go where they are admired, yet Lady Hesketh complains of not having seen you. Yours, CCVII.-To JOSEPH HILL, Esq. W. C. April 5, 1786. I did, as you suppose, bestow all possible consideration on the subject of an apology for my Homerican undertaking. I turned the matter about in my mind an hundred different ways, and in every way in which it would present itself found it an impracticable business. It is impossible for me, with what delicacy soever I may manage it, to state the objections that lie against Pope's translation, without incurring odium and the imputation of arrogance: foreseeing this danger, I choose to say nothing. W. C. P.S.-You may well wonder at my courage, who have undertaken a work of such enormous length. You would wonder more if you knew that I translated the whole Iliad with no other help than a Clavis. But I have since equipped myself better for this immense journey, and am revising the work in company with a good com mentator. CCVIII.-To LADY HESKETH. MY DEAREST COUSIN, Olney, April 17, 1786. If you will not quote Solomon, my dearest Cousin, I will. He says, and as beautifully as truly-" Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, but when the desire cometh it is a tree of life!" I feel how much reason he had on his side when he made this observation, and am myself sick of your fortnight's delay. The vicarage was built by Lord Dartmouth, and was not finished till some time after we arrived at Olney, consequently it is new. It is a smart stone building well sashed, by much too good for the living, but just what I should wish for you. It has, as you justly concluded from my premises, a garden, but rather calculated for use than ornament. It is square and well walled, but has neither arbour nor alcove, nor other shade except the shadow of the house; but we have two gardens, which are yours. Between your mansion and ours is interposed nothing but an orchard, into which a door opening out of our garden affords us the easiest communication imaginable, will save the roundabout by the town, and make both houses one. Your chamber-windows look over the river, and over the meadows to a village called Emberton, and command the whole length of a |