I scratch this between dinner and tea; a time when I cannot write much without disordering my noddle, and bringing a flush into my face. You will excuse me, therefore, if through respect for the two important considerations of health and beauty, I conclude myself Ever yours, CCXCVII.-TO SAMUEL ROSE, Esq. W. C. MY DEAR FRIEND, Weston, Sept. 24, 1789. You left us exactly at the wrong time. Had you stayed till now you would have had the pleasure of hearing even my cousin say— "I am cold;" and the still greater pleasure of being warm yourself; for I have had a fire in the study ever since you went. It is the fault of our summers, that they are hardly ever warm or cold enough. Were they warmer, we should not want a fire; and were they colder, we should have one. I have twice seen and conversed with Mr. J. He is witty, intelligent, and agreeable beyond the common measure of men who are so. But it is the constant effect of a spirit of party to make those hateful to each other who are truly amiable in themselves. Beau sends his love; he was melancholy the whole day after your departure. CCXCVIII.-To SAMUEL ROSE, Esq. W. C. MY DEAR FRIEND, The straw-stuff'd hamper with his ruthless steel -the Rose. And so on. I should rejoice to be the hero of such a tale in the hands of Homer. your You will remember, I trust, that when the state of health or spirits calls for rural walks and fresh air, you have always a retreat at Weston. We are all well, all love you, down to the very dog; and shall be glad to hear that you have exchanged languor for alacrity, and the debility that you mention for indefatigable vigour. Mr. Throckmorton has made me a handsome present; Villoison's edition of the Iliad, elegantly bound by Edwards. If I live long enough, by the contributions of my friends I shall once more be sessed of a library. Adieu, CCXCIX.-To JOSEPH HILL, Esq. W. C. pos MY DEAR FRIEND, Weston, Dec. 18, 1789. The present appears to me a wonderful period in the history of mankind. That nations so long contentedly slaves should on a sudden become enamoured of liberty, and understand, as suddenly, their own natural right to it, feeling themselves at the same time inspired with resolution to assert it, seems difficult to account for from natural causes. With respect to the final issue of all this, I can only say, that if, having discovered the value of liberty, they should next discover the value of peace, and lastly the value of the word of God, they will be happier than they ever were since the rebellion of the first pair, and as happy as it is possible they should be in the present life. Most sincerely yours, CCC.-TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT, Esq. MY DEAR WALTER, W. C. I know that you are too reasonable a man to expect any thing like punctuality of correspondence from a translator of Homer, especially from one who is a doer also of many other things at the same time; for I labour hard not only to acquire a little fame for myself, but to win it also for others, men of whom I know nothing, not even their names, who send me their poetry, that by translating it out of prose into verse, I may make it more like poetry than it was. Having heard all this, you will feel yourself not only inclined to pardon my long silence, but to pity me also for the cause of it. may, if you please, believe likewise, for it is true, that I have a faculty of remembering my friends even when I do not write to them, and of loving them not one jot the less, though I leave them to starve for want of a letter from me. And now I think you have an apology both as to style, matter, and manner, altogether unexceptionable. You Why is the winter like a backbiter? Because Solomon says that a backbiter separates between chief friends, and so does the winter ; to this dirty season it is owing that I see nothing of the valuable Chesters, whom, indeed, I see less at all times than serves at all to content me. I hear of them indeed occasionally from my neighbours at the Hall, but even of that comfort I have lately enjoyed less than usual, Mr. Throckmorton having been hindered by his first fit of the gout from his usual visits to Chichely. The gout, however, has not prevented his making me a handsome present of a folio edition of the Iliad, published about a year since at Venice, by a literato who calls himself Villoison. It is possible that you have seen it, and that if you have it not yourself, it has at least found its way to Lord Bagot's library. If neither should be the case, when I write next (for sooner or later I shall certainly write to you again if I live) I will send you some pretty stories out of his Prolegomena which will make your hair stand on end, as mine has stood on end already, they so horribly affect, in point of authenticity, the credit of the works of the immortal Homer. Wishing you and Mrs. Bagot all the happiness that a new year can possibly bring with it, I remain with Mrs. Unwin's best respects, yours, my dear friend with all sincerity, W. C. My paper mourns for the death of Lord Cowper, my valuable Cousin, and muchmy benefactor. CCCI. TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT. MY DEAR FRIEND, I am a terrible creature for not writing sooner, but the old excuse must serve, at least I will not occupy paper with the addition of others unless you should insist on it, in which case I can assure you that I have them ready. Now to business. From Villoison I learn, that it was the avowed opinion and persuasion of Callimachus (whose hymns we both studied at Westminster), that Homer was very imperfectly understood even in his day; that his admirers, deceived by the perspicuity of his style, fancied themselves masters of his meaning, when in truth they knew little about it. Now we know that Callimachus, as I have hinted, was himself a poet, and a good one; he was also esteemed a good critic; he almost, if not actually, adored Homer, and imitated him as nearly as he could. What shall we say to this? I will tell you what I say to it. Callimachus meant, and he could mean nothing more by this assertion, than that the poems of Homer were in fact an allegory; that under the obvious import of his stories lay concealed a mystic sense, sometimes philosophical, sometimes religious, sometimes moral, and that the generality either wanted penetration, or industry, or had not been properly qualified by their studies, to discover it. This I can readily believe, for I am myself an ignoramus in these points, and except here and there discern nothing more than the letter. But if Callimachus will tell me that even of that I am ignorant, I hope soon by two great volumes to convince him of the contrary. I learn also from the same Villoison, that Pisistratus, who was a sort of Mecenas in Athens, where he gave great encouragement to literature, and built and furnished a public library, regretting that there was no complete copy of Homer's works in the world, resolved to make one. For this purpose he advertised rewards in all the newspapers to those, who being possessed memoriter of any part or parcels of the poems of that bard, would resort to his house and repeat them to his secretaries, that they might write them. Now it happened that more were desirous of the reward than qualified to deserve it. The consequence was, that the non-qualified persons having, many of them, a pretty knack at versification, imposed on the generous Athenian most egregiously, giving him, instead of Homer's verses, which they had not to give, verses of their own invention. He, good creature, suspecting no such fraud, took them all for gospel, and entered them into his volume accordingly. Now let him believe the story who can. That Homer's works were in this manner corrected I can believe; but that a learned Athenian could be so imposed upon, with sufficient means of detection at hand, I cannot. Would he not be on his guard? Would not a difference of style and manner have occurred? Would not that difference have excited a suspicion? Would not that suspicion have led to inquiry, and would not that inquiry have issued in detection? For how easy was it in the multitude of Homer-conners to find two, ten, twenty, possessed of the questionable passage, and by confronting him with the impudent impostor, to convict him. Abeas ergo in malam rem cum istis tuis hallucinationibus, Villoisone! Yours, W. C. CCCII. To SAMUEL ROSE, Esq. MY DEAR SIR, The Lodge, Jan. 3, 1790. I have been long silent, but you have had the charity, I hope and believe, not to ascribe my silence to a wrong cause. The truth is I have been too busy to write to any body, having been obliged to give my early mornings to the revisal and correction of a little volume of hymns for children, written by I know not whom. This task I finished but yesterday, and while it was in hand wrote only to my cousin, and to her rarely. From her, however, I knew that you would hear of my well-being, which made me less anxious about my debts to you than I could have been otherwise. I am almost the only person at Weston, known to you, who have enjoyed tolerable health this winter. In your next letter give us some account of your own state of health, for I have had many anxieties about you. The winter has been mild; but our winters are in general such, that when a friend leaves us in the beginning of that season, I always feel in my heart a perhaps, importing that we have possibly met for the last time, and that the robins may whistle on the grave of one of us before the return of summer. I am still thrumming Homer's lyre; that is to say, I am still employed in my last revisal; and to give you some idea of the intenseness of my toils, I will inform you that it cost me all the morning yesterday, and all the evening, to translate a single simile to my mind. The transitions from one member of the subject to another, though easy and natural in the Greek, turn out often so intolerably awkward in an English version, that almost endless labour, and no little address, are requisite to give them grace and elegance. I forget if I told you that your German Clavis has been of considerable use to me. I am indebted to it for a right understanding of the manner in which Achilles prepared pork, mutton, and goat's flesh, for the entertainment of his friends, in the night when they came deputed by Agamemnon to negociate a reconciliation; a passage of which nobody in the world is perfectly master, myself only and Schaulfelbergerus excepted, nor ever was, except when Greek was a live language. I do not know whether my cousin has told you or not how I brag in my letters to her concerning my translation; perhaps her modesty feels more for me than mine for myself, and she would blush to let even you know the degree of my self-conceit on that subject. I will tell you, however, expressing myself as decently as vanity will permit, that it has undergone such a change for the better in this last revisal, that I have much warmer hopes of success than formerly. Yours, W. C. CCCIII.-To LADY HESKETH. The Lodge, Jan. 23, 1790. MY DEAR COz, I had a letter yesterday from the wild boy Johnson, for whom I have conceived a great affection. It was just such a letter as I like, of the true helter-skelter kind; and though he writes a remarkably good hand, scribbled with such rapidity, that it was barely legible. He gave me a droll account of the adventures of Lord Howard's note, and of his own in pursuit of it. The poem he brought me came as from Lord Howard, with his lordship's request that I would revise it. It is in the form of a pastoral, and is intituled "The Tale of the Lute, or, the Beauties of Audley End." I read it attentively, was much pleased with part of it, and part of it I equally disliked. I told him so, and in such terms as one naturally uses when there seems to be no occasion to qualify or to alleviate censure. I observed him afterwards somewhat more thoughtful and silent, but occasionally as pleasant as usual; and in Kilwick-wood, where we walked the next day, the truth came outthat he was himself the author; and that Lord Howard not approving it altogether, and several friends of his own age, to whom he had shown it, differing from his lordship in opinion, and being highly pleased with it, he had come at last to a resolution to abide by my |