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before breakfast I devote to you. The moment Mrs. Unwin arrives in the study, be what I have written much or little, I shall make my bow and take leave. If you live to be a judge, as if I augur right you will, I shall expect to hear of a walking circuit. I was shocked at what you tell me of Superior talents, it seems, give no security for propriety of conduct; on the contrary, having a natural tendency to nourish pride, they often betray the possessor into such mistakes as men more moderately gifted never commit. Ability, therefore, is not wisdom, and an ounce of grace is a better guard against gross absurdity than the brightest talents in the world.

I rejoice that you are prepared for transcript work; here will be plenty for you. The day on which you shall receive this, I beg you will remember to drink one glass at least to the success of the Iliad, which I finished the day before yesterday, and yesterday began the Odyssey. It will be some time before I shall perceive myself travelling in another road; the objects around me are at present so much the same, Olympus and a council of gods meet me at my first entrance. To tell you the truth, I am weary of heroes and deities, and, with reverence be it spoken, shall be glad for variety's sake to exchange their company for that of a Cyclops.

Weston has not been without its tragedies since you left us; Mrs. Throckmorton's piping bull-finch has been eaten by a rat, and the villain left nothing but poor Bully's beak behind him. It will be a wonder if this event does not at some convenient time employ my versifying passion. Did ever fair lady, from the Lesbia of Catullus to the present day, lose her bird, and find no poet to commemorate the loss?

CCLXXXV.-To SAMUEL ROSE, Esq.

W. C.

MY DEAR FRIEND, Weston, Nov. 30, 1788. Your letter, accompanying the books with which you have favoured me, and for which I return you a thousand thanks, did not arrive till yesterday. I shall have great pleasure in taking now and then a peep at my old friend Vincent Bourne, the neatest of all men in his versification, though when I was under his ushership at Westminster the most slovenly in his person. He was so inattentive to his boys, and so indifferent whether they brought him good or bad exercises, or none at all, that he seemed determined, as he was the best, so to be the last Latin poet of the Westminster line; a plot

Let my obedience then excuse

My disobedience now;
Nor some reproof yourself refuse
From your aggrieved Bow-wow!

If killing birds be such a crime
(Which I can hardly see),
What think you, Sir, of killing time
With verse address'd to me?

which, I believe, he executed very successfully, for I have not heard of any one who has deserved to be compared with him.

We have had hardly any rain or snow since you left us, The roads are accordingly as dry as in the middle of summer, and the opportunity of walking much more favourable. We have no season in my mind so pleasant as such a winter; and I account it particularly fortunate that such it proves, my cousin being with us. She is in good health and cheerful, so are we all; and this I say, knowing you will be glad to hear it, for you have seen the time when this could not be said of all your friends at Weston. We shall rejoice to see you here at Christmas; but I recollect when I hinted such an excursion by word of mouth, you gave me no great encouragement to expect you. Minds alter, and yours may be of the number of those that do so; and if it should, you will be entirely welcome to us all. Were there no other reason for your coming than merely the pleasure it will afford to us, that reason alone would be sufficient: but after so many toils, and with so many more in prospect, it seems essential to your well-being that you should allow yourself a respite, which perhaps you can take as comfortably (I am sure as quietly) here as any where.

The ladies beg to be remembered to you with all possible esteem and regard; they are just come down to breakfast, and being at this moment extremely talkative, oblige me to put an end to my letter.

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I have a fresh occasion to acknowledge my obligation to Lord Carrington for another additional letter of Cowper. The following contains the genuine sentiments of the poet on the political character of Mr. Pitt. I print them with a melancholy pleasure in reflecting that these two illustrious and eloquent men, who are equally enshrined in the grateful remembrance of our country, spoke with justness and sensibility on the talents and virtues of each other.

CCLXXXVI.-To ROBERT SMITH, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR,

Weston Underwood, Dec. 20, 1788. Mrs. Unwin is in tolerable health, and adds her warmest thanks to mine for your favour, and for your obliging inquiries. My own health is better than it has been many years. Long time I had a stomach that would digest nothing, and now nothing disagrees with it; an amendment for which I am, under God, indebted to the daily use of soluble tartar, which I have never omitted these two years. I am still, as you may suppose, occupied in my long labour. The Iliad has nearly received its last polish; and I have advanced in a rough copy as far as to the ninth book of the Odyssey. My friends are, some of them, in haste to see the

work printed, and my answer to them is-"I do nothing else, and this I do day and night—it must in time be finished."

My thoughts, however, are not engaged to Homer only. I cannot be so much a poet as not to feel greatly for the king, the queen, and the country. My speculations on these subjects are indeed me.. lancholy, for no such tragedy has befallen in my day. We are forbidden to trust in man; I will not therefore say, I trust in Mr. Pitt; but in his counsels, under the blessing of Providence, the remedy is I believe to be found, if a remedy there be. His integrity, firmness, and sagacity, are the only human means that seem adequate to the great emergence.

You say nothing of your own health, of which I should have been happy to have heard favourably. May you long enjoy the best. Neither Mrs. Unwin nor myself have a sincerer or a warmer wish than for your felicity. I am, my dear Sir,

DEAR SIR,

Your most obliged and affectionate,

CCLXXXVII.-To SAMUEL ROSE, Esq.

W. C.

The Lodge, Jan. 19, 1789.

I have taken, since you went away, many of the walks which we have taken together; and none of them, I believe, without thoughts of you. I have, though not a good memory in general, yet a good local memory, and can recollect by the help of a tree or stile, what you said on that particular spot. For this reason I purpose, when the summer is come, to walk with a book in my pocket; what I read at my fireside I forget, but what I read under a hedge, or at the side of a pond, that pond and that hedge will always bring to my remembrance; and this is a sort of memoria technica, which I would recommend to you if I did not know that you have no occasion for it.

I am reading Sir John Hawkins, and still hold the same opinion of his book as when you were here. There are in it undoubtedly some awkwardnesses of phrase, and which is worse, here and there some unequivocal indications of a vanity not easily pardonable in a man of his years; but on the whole I find it amusing, and to me, at least, to whom every thing that has passed in the literary world within these five and twenty years is new, sufficiently replete with information. Mr. Throckmorton told me about three days since, that it was lately recommended to him by a sensible man, as a book that would give him great insight into the history of modern literature, and modern men of letters, a commendation which I really think it merits. Fifty years hence, perhaps, the world will feel itself obliged to him.

W. C.

DEAR SIR,

CCLXXXVIII.-To SAMUEL ROSE, Esq.

The Lodge, Jun. 24, 1789. We have heard from my cousin in Norfolk-street; she reached home safely, and in good time. An observation suggests itself, which though I have but little time for observation-making, I must allow myself time to mention. Accidents, as we call them, generally occur when there seems least reason to expect them; if a friend of ours travels far in different roads, at an unfavourable season, we are reasonably alarmed for the safety of one in whom we take so much. interest; yet how seldom do we hear a tragical account of such a journey! It is on the contrary, at home, in our yard, or garden, perhaps in our parlour, that disaster finds us; in any place, in short, where we seem perfectly out of the reach of danger. The lesson inculcated by such a procedure on the part of Providence towards us seems to be that of perpetual dependence.

Having preached this sermon, I must hasten to a close; you know that I am not idle, nor can I afford to be so; I would gladly spend more time with you, but by some means or other this day has hitherto proved a day of hindrance and confusion.

W. C.

CCLXXXIX.-TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT.

Weston, Jan. 29, 1789.

MY DEAR FRIEND, I shall be a better, at least a more frequent correspondent, when I have done with Homer. I am not forgetful of any letters that I owe, and least of all forgetful of my debts in that way to you; on the contrary, I live in a continual state of self-reproach for not writing more punctually, but the old Grecian, whom I charge myself never to neglect, lest I should never finish him, has at present a voice that seems to drown all other demands, and many to which I could listen with more pleasure, than even to his Os rotundum. I am now in the eleventh book of the Odyssey,' conversing with the dead. Invoke the muse in my behalf, that I may roll the stone of Sisyphus with some success. To do it as Homer has done it, is, I suppose, in our verse and language, impossible, but I will hope not to labour altogether to as little purpose as Sisyphus himself did.

Though I meddle little with politics, and can find but little leisure to do so, the present state of things unavoidably engages a share of my attention. But as they say Archimedes, when Syracuse was taken, was found busied in the solution of a problem, so, come what may, I shall be found translating Homer.

Sincerely yours,

W. C.

MY DEAR SIR,

CCXC.-To SAMUEL ROSE, Esq.

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The Lodge, May 20, 1789. Finding myself, between twelve and one, at the end of the seventeenth book of the Odyssey,' I give the interval between the present moment and the time of walking to you. If I write letters before I sit down to Homer, I feel my spirits too flat for poetry; and too flat for letter-writing if I address myself to Homer first; but the last I choose as the least evil, because my friends will pardon my dullness, but the public will not.

I had been some days uneasy on your account, when yours arrived. We should have rejoiced to have seen you, would your engagements have permitted; but in the autumn, I hope, if not before, we shall have the pleasure to receive you. At what time we may expect Lady Hesketh, at present I know not; but imagine that at any time after the month of June you will be sure to find her with us, which I mention, knowing that to meet you will add a relish to all the pleasures she can find at Weston,

When I wrote those lines on the queen's visit, I thought I had performed well; but it belongs to me, as I have told you before, to dislike whatever I write when it has been written a month. The performance was therefore sinking in my esteem, when your approbation of it arriving in good time buoyed it up again. It will now keep possession of the place it holds in my good opinion, because it has been favoured with yours; and a copy will certainly be at your service, whenever you choose to have one.

Nothing is more certain, than that when I wrote the line,

God made the country, and man made the town,

I had not the least recollection of that very similar one which you quote from Hawkins Brown. It convinces me that critics (and none more than Warton in his notes on Milton's minor poems) have often charged authors with borrowing what they drew from their own fund. Brown was an entertaining companion when he had drunk his bottle, but not before; this proved a snare to him, and he would sometimes drink too much; but I know not that he was chargeable with any other irregularities. He had those among his intimates who would not have been such had he been otherwise viciously inclined; the Duncombes, in particular, father and son, who were of unblemished morals,

ON THE QUEEN'S VISIT TO LONDON,
The Night of the Seventeenth of March, 1789.
When long sequester'd from his throne,
George took his seat again,

By right of worth, not blood alone,
Entitled here to reign,

W. C.

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