be sung to the tune of "Tweed-side," or any other tune that will suit it, for I am not nice on that subject. I would have copied it for you had I not almost filled my sheet without it; but now, my dear, you must stay till the sweet sirens of London shall bring it to you, or if that happy day should never arrive, I hereby acknowledge myself your debtor to that amount. I shall now probably cease to sing of tortured negroes, a theme which never pleased me, but which, in the hope of doing them some little service, I was not unwilling to handle. If any thing could have raised Miss More to a higher place in my opinion than she possessed before, it could only be your information, that, after all, she, and not Mr. Wilberforce, is author of that volume. How comes it to pass that she, being a woman, writes with a force and energy, and a correctness hitherto arrogated by the men, and not very frequently displayed even by the men themselves? Adieu, CCLXVIII.-To LADY HESKETH. W. C. MY DEAREST COUSIN, The Lodge, May 6, 1788. You ask me how I like Smollett's Don Quixote? I answer, well, perhaps better than any body's; but having no skill in the original, some diffidence becomes me; that is to say, I do not know whether I ought to prefer it or not. Yet there is so little deviation from other versions of it which I have seen, that I do not much hesitate. It has made me laugh, I know, immoderately, and in such a case ça suffit. A thousand thanks, my dear, for the new convenience in the way of stowage, which you are so kind as to intend me. There is nothing in which I am so deficient as repositories for letters, papers, and litter of all sorts. Your last present has helped me somewhat but not with respect to such things as require lock and key, which are numerous. A box, therefore, so secured, will be to me an invaluable acquisition; and since you leave me to my option what shall be the size thereof, I of course prefer a folio. On the back of the book-seeming box, some artist, expert in those matters, may inscribe these words- Collectanea curiosa. -The English of which is, a collection of curiosities-a title which I prefer to all others; because, if I live, I shall take care that the box shall merit it, and because it will operate as an incentive to open that which, being locked, cannot be opened; for in these cases the greater the balk, the more wit is discovered by the ingenious contriver of it-viz. myself. The General, I understand by his last letter, is in town. In my last to him I told him news; possibly it will give you pleasure, and ought for that reason to be made known to you as soon as possible. My friend Rowley, who I told you has, after twenty-five years' silence, renewed his correspondence with me, and who now lives in Ireland, where he has many and considerable connexions, has sent to me for thirty subscription papers. Rowley is one of the most benevolent and friendly creatures in the world, and will, I dare say, do all in his power to serve me. I am just recovered from a violent cold, attended by a cough, which split my head while it lasted. I escaped these tortures all the winter, but whose constitution, or what skin, can possibly be proof against our vernal breezes in England? Mine never were, nor will be. When people are intimate, we say they are as great as two inkleweavers: on which expression I have to remark, in the first place, that the word great is here used in a sense which the corresponding term has not, so far as I know, in any other language; and secondly, that inkle-weavers contract intimacies with each other sooner than other people, on account of their juxtaposition in weaving of inkle. Hence it is that Mr. Gregson and I emulate those happy weavers in the closeness of our connexion. We live near to each other, and while the Hall is empty, are each other's only extraforaneous comfort. Most truly thine, CCLXIX.-To JOSEPH HILL, Esq. W. C. Weston, May 8, 1788. Alas! my library, I must now give it up for a lost thing for ever. The only consolation belonging to the circumstance is, or seems to be, that no such loss did ever befall any other man, or can ever befall me again. As far as books are concerned, I am Totus teres atque rotundus, and may set fortune at defiance. The books which had been my father's had most of them his arms on the inside cover, but the rest no mark, neither his name nor mine. I could mourn for them like Sancho for his Dapple, but it would avail me nothing. You will oblige me much by sending me Crazy Kate. A gentleman last winter promised me both her and the Lace-maker, but he went to London, that place in which, as in the grave, "all things are forgotten," and I have never seen either of them. I begin to find some prospect of a conclusion, of the Iliad at least, now opening upon me, having reached the eighteenth book. letter found me yesterday in the very fact of dispersing the whole host of Troy by the voice only of Achilles. There is nothing extravagant in the idea, for you have witnessed a similar effect attending even such a voice as mine at midnight, from a garret window, on the dogs of a whole parish, whom I have put to flight in a moment. W. C. CCLXX.-To LADY HESKETH. The Lodge, May 12, 1788. It is probable, my dearest coz, that I shall not be able to write much, but as much as I can I will. The time between rising and breakfast is all that I can at present find, and this morning I lay longer than usual. In the style of the lady's note to you, I can easily perceive a smatch of her character. Neither men nor women write with such neatness of expression who have not given a good deal of attention to language, and qualified themselves by study. At the same time it gave me much more pleasure to observe that my coz, though not standing on the pinnacle of renown quite so elevated as that which lifts Mrs. Montagu to the clouds, falls in no degree short of her in this particular; so that should she make you a member of her academy, she will do it honour. Suspect me not of flattering you, for I abhor the thought; neither will you suspect it. Recollect that it is an invariable rule with me never to pay compliments to those I love. Two days, en suite, I have walked to Gayhurst: a longer journey than I have walked on foot these seventeen years. The first day I went alone, designing merely to make the experiment, and choosing to be at liberty to return at whatsoever point of my pilgrimage I should find myself fatigued. For I was not without suspicion that years, and some other things no less injurious than years, viz., melancholy and distress of mind, might by this time have unfitted me for such achievements. But I found it otherwise. I reached the church, which stands as you know, in the garden, in fifty-five minutes, and returned in ditto time to Weston. The next day I took the same walk with Mr. Powley, having a desire to show him the prettiest place in the country. I not only performed these two excursions without injury to my health, but have by means of them gained indisputable proof that my ambulatory faculty is not yet impaired ; a discovery which, considering that to my feet alone I am likely, as I have ever been, to be indebted always for my transportation from place to place, I find very delectable. You will find in the Gentleman's Magazine a sonnet addressed to Henry Cowper, signed T. H. I am the writer of it. No creature knows this but yourself; you will make what use of the intelligence you shall see good. CCLXXI.-To JOSEPH HILL, Esq. W. C. May 20, 1788. MY DEAR FRIEND, ments. sented her; but she was a figure well suited to the account given of her in the Task,' and has a face exceedingly expressive of despairing melancholy. The lace-maker is accidentally a good likeness of a young woman, once our neighbour, who was hardly less handsome than the picture twenty years ago; but the loss of one husband, and the acquisition of another, have, since that time, impaired her much; yet she might still be supposed to have sat to the artist. We dined yesterday with your friend and mine, the most companionable and domestic Mr. C. The whole kingdom can hardly furnish a spectacle more pleasing to a man who has a taste for true happiness than himself, Mrs. C, and their multitudinous family. Seven long miles are interposed between us, or perhaps I should oftener have an opportunity of declaiming on this subject. may I am now in the nineteenth book of the Iliad, and on the point of displaying such feats of heroism performed by Achilles, as make all other achievements trivial. I well exclaim, "O! for a muse of fire!" especially having not only a great host to cope with, but a great river also; much, however, may be done, when Homer leads the way. I should not have chosen to have been the original author of such a business, even though all the Nine had stood at my elbow. Time has wonderful effects. We admire that in ancient, for which we should send a modern bard to Bedlam. I saw at Mr. C's a great curiosity; an antique bust of Paris in Parian marble. You will conclude that it interested me exceedingly. I pleased myself with supposing that it once stood in Helen's chamber. It was in fact brought from the Levant, and though not well mended (for it had suffered much by time) is an admirable performance. W. C. CCLXXII.-To LADY HESKETH. MY DEAR Coz, "I send a copy of verses somebody has written in the Gentleman's Magazine for April last. Independent of my partiality towards the subject, I think the lines themselves are good.' Thus it appears that my poetical adventure has succeeded to my wish, and I write to him by this post, on purpose to inform him that the somebody in question is myself. I no longer wonder that Mrs. Montagu stands at the head of all that is called learned, and that every critic vails his bonnet to her superior judgment. I am now reading, and have reached the middle of her Essay on the Genius of Shakspeare;' a book of which, strange as it may seem, though I must have read it formerly, I had absolutely forgot the existence. The learning, the good sense, the sound judgment, and the wit displayed in it, fully justify not only my compliment, but all compliments that either have been already paid to her talents, or shall be paid hereafter. Voltaire, I doubt not, rejoiced that his antagonist wrote in English, and that his countrymen could not possibly be judges of the dispute. Could they have known how much she was in the right, and by how many thousand miles the bard of Avon is superior to all their dramatists, the French critic would have lost half his fame among them. I saw at Mr. C's a head of Paris; an antique of Parian marble. His uncle, who left him the estate, brought it, as I understand, from the Levant: you may suppose I viewed it with all the enthusiasm that belongs to a translator of Homer. It is in reality a great curiosity, and highly valuable. Our friend Sephus has sent me two prints, the Lace-maker and Crazy Kate. These also I have contemplated with pleasure, having as you know, a particular interest in them. The former of them is not more beautiful than a lace-maker, once our neighbour at Olney; though the artist has assembled as many charms in her countenance as I ever saw in any countenance, one excepted. Kate is both younger and handsomer than the original which I drew, but she is in a good style, and as mad as need be. How does this hot weather suit thee, my dear, in London? As for me, with all my colonnades and bowers, I am quite oppressed by it. W. C. CCLXXIII.-To LADY HESKETH. MY DEAREST COUSIN, The Lodge, June 3, 1788. The excessive heat of these last few days was indeed oppressive; but excepting the languor that it occasioned both in my mind and body, it was far from being prejudicial to me. It opened ten thousand pores, by which as many mischiefs, the effects of long obstruction, began to breathe themselves forth abundantly. Then came an east wind, baneful to me at all times, but following so closely such a sultry season, uncommonly noxious. To speak in the seaman's phrase, not entirely strange to you, I was taken all aback; and the humours which would have escaped, if old Eurus would have given them leave, finding every door shut, have fallen into my eyes. But in a country like this, poor miserable mortals must be content to suffer all that sudden and violent changes can inflict; and if they are quit for about half the plagues that Caliban calls down on Prospero, they may say we are well off and dance for joy, if the rheumatism or cramp will let them. Did you ever see an advertisement by one Fowle, a dancingmaster of Newport-Pagnel? If not, I will contrive to send it to you for your amusement. It is the most extravagantly ludicrous |