There is something so peculiarly soothing in the sentiments and language of Cowper, whenever he speaks of a departed friend, that I feel not a little obliged to Lord Carrington for his kind permission to gratify my readers with the following additional letter on the death of Mr. Unwin. CCXXXIII.-To ROBERT SMITH, Esq. MY DEAR SIR, Weston Underwood, near Olney, We have indeed suffered a great loss by the death of our friend Unwin, and the shock that attended it was the more severe as till within a few hours of his decease there seemed to be no very alarming symptoms. All the account that we received from Mr. Henry Thornton, who acted like a true friend on the occasion, and with a tenderness toward all concerned that does him great honour, encouraged our hopes of his recovery; and Mrs. Unwin herself found him on her arrival at Winchester so cheerful, and in appearance so likely to live, that her letter also seemed to promise us all that we could wish on the subject. But an unexpected turn in his distemper which suddenly seized his bowels, dashed all our hopes, and deprived us almost immediately of a man whom we must ever regret. His mind having been from his infancy deeply tinctured with religious sentiments, he was always impressed with a sense of the importance of the great change of all, and on former occasions, when at any time he found himself indisposed, was consequently subject to distressing alarms and apprehensions. But in this last instance, his mind was from the first composed and easy; his fears were taken away and succeeded by such a resignation as warrants us in saying, "that God made all his bed in his sickness." I believe it is always thus where the heart, though upright toward God as Unwin's assuredly was, is yet troubled with the fear of death. When death indeed comes, he is either welcome or at least has lost his sting. I have known many such instances, and his mother, from the moment that she learned with what tranquillity he was favoured in his illness, for that very reason expected that it would be his last. Yet not with so much certainty but that the favourable accounts of him, at length, in a great measure superseded that persuasion. She begs me to assure you, my dear sir, how sensible she is, as well as myself, of the kindness of your inquiries. She suffers this stroke, not with more patience and submission than I expected, for I never knew her hurried by any affliction into the loss of either; but in appearance at least, and at present, with less injury to her health than I apprehended. She observed to me after reading your kind letter, that though it was a proof of the greatness of her loss, it yet afforded her pleasure, though a melancholy one, to see how much her son had been loved and valued by such a person as yourself. Mrs. Unwin wrote to her daughter-in-law to invite her and the family hither; hoping that a change of scene, and a situation so pleasant as this, may be of service to her, but we have not yet received her answer. I have good hope, however, that great as her affliction must be, she will yet be able to support it, for she well knows whither to resort for consolation. The virtues and amiable qualities of our friends are the things for which we most wish to keep them; but they are, on the other hand, the very things that in particular ought to reconcile us to their departure. We find ourselves sometimes connected with, and engaged in affection, too, to a person of whose readiness and fitness for another life we cannot have the highest opinion. The death of such men has a bitterness in it, both to themselves and survivors, which, thank God, is not to be found in the death of Unwin. I know, my dear sir, how much you valued him, and I know also how much he valued you. With respect to him, all is well; and of you, if I should survive you, which perhaps is not very probable, I shall say the same. In the mean time, believe me, with the warmest wishes for your health and happiness, and with Mrs. Unwin's affectionate respects, Yours, my dear sir, most faithfully, W. C. CCXXXIV.-To LADY HESKETH. Weston, Dec. 9, 1786. I am perfectly sure that you are mistaken, though I do not wonder at it, considering the singular nature of the event, in the judgment that you form of poor Unwin's death, as it affects the interest of his intended pupil. When a tutor was wanted for him, you sought out the wisest and best man for the office within the circle of your connexions. It pleased God to take him home to himself. Men eminently wise and good are very apt to die because they are fit to do so. You found in Unwin a man worthy to succeed him; and He, in whose hands are the issues of life and death, seeing no doubt that Unwin was ripe for a removal into a better state, removed him also. The matter, viewed in this light, seems not so wonderful as to refuse all explanation, except such as in a melancholy moment you have given to it. And I am so convinced that the little boy's destiny had no influence at all in hastening the death of his tutors elect, that it not impossible, on more accounts than one, that I should be able to serve him in that capacity, I would, without the least fear of dying a moment sooner, offer myself to that office; I would even do it were I conscious of the same fitness for another and a better state, that I believe them to have been both endowed with. In that case I perhaps might die too; but if I should, it would not be on account of that connexion. Neither, my dear, had your interference in the business any thing to do with the catastrophe. Your whole conduct in it must have been acceptable in the sight of God, as it was directed by principles of the purest benevolence. were I have not touched Homer to-day. Yesterday was one of my terrible seasons, and when I arose this morning, I found that I had not sufficiently recovered myself to engage in such an occupation. Having letters to write, I the more willingly gave myself a dispensation.-Good night. Yours, ever, CCXXXV.-To JOSEPH HILL, Esq. W. C. MY DEAR FRIEND, Weston, Dec. 9, 1786. We had just begun to enjoy the pleasantness of our new situation, to find at least as much comfort in it as the season of the year would permit, when affliction found us out in our retreat, and the news reached us of the death of Mr. Unwin. He had taken a western tour with Mr. Henry Thornton, and in his return, at Winchester, was seized with a putrid fever, which sent him to his grave. He is gone to it, however, though young, as fit for it as age itself could have made him. Regretted, indeed, and always to be regretted by those who knew him, for he had every thing that makes a man valuable both in his principles and in his manners; but leaving still this consolation to his surviving friends, that he was desirable in this world chiefly because he was so well prepared for a better. I find myself here situated exactly to my mind. Weston is one of the prettiest villages in England, and the walks about it at all seasons of the year delightful. I know that you will rejoice with me in the change that we have made, and for which I am altogether indebted to Lady Hesketh. It is a change as great as (to compare metropolitan things with rural) from St. Giles's to Grosvenor Square. Our house is in all respects commodious, and in some degree elegant; and I cannot give you a better idea of that which we have left, than by telling you the present candidates for it are a publican and a shoemaker. W. C. CCXXXVI.-To LADY HESKETH. Weston, Dec. 21. 1786. Your welcome letter, my beloved cousin, which ought by the date to have arrived on Sunday, being by some untoward accident delayed, came not till yesterday. It came, however, and has relieved me from a thousand distressing apprehensions on your account. The dew of your intelligence has refreshed my poetical laurels. A little praise now and then is very good for your hard-working poet, who is apt to grow languid, and perhaps careless, without it. Praise I find affects us as money does. The more a man gets of it, with the more vigilance he watches over and preserves it. Such at least is its effect on me, and you may assure yourself that I will never lose a mite of it for want of care. I have already invited the good Padre in general terms, and he shall positively dine here next week whether he will or not. I do not Y at all suspect that his kindness to protestants has any thing insidious in it, any more than I suspect that he transcribes Homer for me with a view for my conversion. He would find me a tough piece of business I can tell him, for when I had no religion at all, I had yet a terrible dread of the pope. How much more now! I should have sent you a longer letter, but was obliged to devote my last evening to the melancholy employment of composing a Latin inscription for the tombstone of poor William; two copies of which I wrote out, and enclosed, one to Henry Thornton and one to Mr. Newton. Homer stands by me biting his thumbs, and swears that if I do not leave off directly, he will choke me with bristly Greek that shall stick in my throat for ever. W. C. CCXXXVII.-TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT. MY DEAR FRIEND, Weston, Jan. 3, 1787. You wish to hear from me at any calm interval of epic frenzy. An interval presents itself, but whether calm or not is perhaps doubtful. Is it possible for a man to be calm, who for three weeks past has been perpetually occupied in slaughter; letting out one man's bowels, smiting another through the gullet, transfixing the liver of another, and lodging an arrow in the buttock of a fourth? Read the thirteenth book of the Iliad, and you will find such amusing incidents as these the subject of it, the sole subject. In order to interest myself in it, and to catch the spirit of it, I had need discard all humanity. It is woful work; and were the best poet in the world to give us at this day such a list of killed and wounded he would not escape universal censure, to the praise of a more enlightened age be it spoken. I have waded through much blood, and through much more I must wade before I shall have finished. I determine in the mean time to account it all very sublime, and for two reasons-First, because all the learned think so; and secondly, because I am to translate it. But were I an indifferent bystander, perhaps I should venture to wish that Homer had applied his wonderful powers to a less disgusting subject. He has in the Odyssey, and I long to get at it. I have not the good fortune to meet with any of those fine things that you say are printed in my praise. But I learn from certain advertisements in the Morning Herald, that I make a conspicuous figure in the entertainments of Free-Masons' Hall. I learn also, that my volumes are out of print, and that a third edition is soon to be published. But if I am not gratified with the sight of odes composed to my honour and glory, I have at least been tickled with some douceurs of a very flattering nature by the post. A lady unknown addresses the best of men-an unknown gentleman has read my inimitable poems, and invites me to his seat in Hampshireanother incognito gives me hopes of a memorial in his garden, and a Welsh attorney sends me his verses to revise, and obligingly asks 66 Say shall my little bark attendant sail, If you find me a little vain hereafter, my friend, you must excuse it in consideration of these powerful incentives, especially the latter; for surely the poet who can charm an attorney, especially a Welsh one, must be at least an Orpheus, if not something greater. Mrs. Unwin is as much delighted as myself with our present situation. But it is a sort of April-weather life that we lead in this world. A little sunshine is generally the prelude to a storm. Hardly had we begun to enjoy the change, when the death of her son cast a gloom upon everything. He was a most exemplary man; of your order; learned, polite and amiable. The father of lovely children, and the husband of a wife (very much like dear Mrs. Bagot) who adored him. Adieu, my friend! Your affectionate CCXXXVIII.-To LADY HESKETH. W. C. The Lodge, Jan. 8, 1787. I have had a little nervous fever lately, my dear, that has somewhat abridged my sleep; and though I find myself better to-day than I have been since it seized me, yet I feel my head lightish, and not in the best order for writing. You will find me, therefore, perhaps not only less alert in my manner than I usually am when my spirits are good, but rather shorter. I will, however, proceed to scribble till I find that it fatigues me; and then will do as I know you would bid me do were you here, shut up my desk and take a walk. The good General tells me, that in the eight first books which I have sent him, he still finds alterations and amendments necessary, of which I myself am equally persuaded; and he asks my leave to lay them before an intimate friend of his, of whom he gives a character that bespeaks him highly deserving such a trust. To this I have no objection, desiring only to make the translation as perfect as I can make it. If God grant me life and health, I would spare no labour to secure that point. The General's letter is extremely kind, and both for matter and manner like all the rest of his dealings with his cousin the poet. I had a letter also yesterday from Mr. Smith, member for Nottingham. Though we never saw each other, he writes to me in the most friendly terms, and interests himself much in my Homer and in the success of my subscription. Speaking on this latter subject, he says, that my Poems are read by hundreds who know nothing of my proposals, and makes no doubt that they would subscribe if they did. I have myself always thought them imperfectly, or rather insufficiently announced. I could pity the poor woman who has been weak enough to claim my song. Such pilferings are sure to be detected. I wrote it, I |