MY DEAR COUSIN, XLIX. TO MRS. COWPER. May 10, 1780. I do not write to comfort you: that office is not likely to be well performed by one who has no comfort for himself; nor to comply with an impertinent ceremony, which in general might well be spared upon such occasions: but because I would not seem indifferent to the concerns of those I have so much reason to esteem and love. If I did not sorrow for your brother's death, I should expect that nobody would for mine; when I knew him, he was much beloved, and I doubt not continued to be so. To live and die together is the lot of a few happy families, who hardly know what a separation means, and one sepulchre serves them all; but the ashes of our kindred are dispersed indeed. Whether the American gulf has swallowed up any other of my relations I know not; it has made many mourners. Believe me, my dear Cousin, though after a long silence which, perhaps, nothing less than the present concern could have prevailed with me to interrupt, as much as ever, Your affectionate kinsman, W. C. L. TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. May 10, 1780. MY DEAR FRIEND, If authors could have lived to adjust and authenticate their own text a commentator would have been an useless creature. For instance-if Dr. Bentley had found, or opined that he had found, the word tube where it seemed to present itself to you, and had judged the subject worthy of his critical acumen, he would either have justified the corrupt reading, or have substituted some invention of his own, in defence of which he would have exerted all his polemical abilities, and have quarrelled with half the literati in Europe. Then suppose the writer himself, as in the present case, to interpose with a gentle whisper, thus-" If you look again, Doctor, you will perceive that what appears to you to be tube is neither more nor less than the monosyllable ink, but I wrote it in great haste, and the want of sufficient precision in the character has occasioned your mistake-you will be especially satisfied, when you see the sense elucidated by the explanation."-But I question whether the Doctor would quit his ground, or allow any author to be a competent judge in his own case. The world, however, would acquiesce immediately, and vote the critic useless. James Andrews, who is my Michael Angelo, pays me many compliments on my success in the art of drawing, but I have not yet the vanity to think myself qualified to furnish your apartment. If I should ever attain to the degree of self-opinion requisite to such an undertaking, I shall labour at it with pleasure. I can only say, though I hope not with the affected modesty of the abovementioned Dr. Bentley, who said the same thing, Me quoque dicunt Vatem pastores. Sed non Ego credulus illis. A crow, rook, or raven, has built a nest in one of the young elm-trees at the side of Mrs. Aspray's orchard. In the violent storm that blew yesterday morning, I saw it agitated to a degree that seemed to threaten its immediate destruction and versified the following thoughts upon the occasion *. LI. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. W. C. June 8, 1780. MY DEAR FRIEND, It is possible I might have indulged myself in the pleasure of writing to you, without waiting for a letter from you, but for a reason which you will not easily guess. Your mother communicated to me the satisfaction you expressed in my correspondence, that you thought me entertaining and clever, and so forth-now you must know I love praise dearly, especially from the judicious, and those who have so much delicacy themselves as not to offend mine in giving it. But then I found this consequence attending, or likely to attend, the eulogium you bestowed-if my friend thought me witty before, he shall think me ten times more witty hereafterwhere I joked once I will joke five times; and, for one sensible remark, I will send him a dozen. Now this foolish vanity would have spoiled me quite, and would have made me as disgusting a letter-writer as Pope, who seems to have thought that unless a sentence was well turned, and every period pointed with some conceit, it was not worth the carriage. Accordingly he is to me, except in a very few instances, the most disagreeable maker of epistles that ever I met with. I was willing, therefore, to wait till the impression your commendation had made upon the foolish part of me was worn off, that I might scribble away as usual, and write my uppermost thoughts, and those only. You are better skilled in ecclesiastical law than I am-Mrs. P. desires me to inform her whether a parson can be obliged to take an apprentice. For some of her husband's opposers at Dthreaten to clap one upon him. Now I think it would be rather hard, if clergymen, who are not allowed to exercise any handicraft whatever, should be subject to such an imposition. If Mr. P. was a cordwainer, or a breeches-maker, all the week, and a preacher only on Sundays, it would seem reasonable enough, in that case, that he should take an apprentice, if he chose it. But even then, in my poor judgment, he ought to be left to his option. If they mean by an apprentice a pupil whom they will oblige him to hew * Cowper's Fable of the Raven concluded this letter. into a parson, and after chipping away the block that hides the minister within, to qualify him to stand erect in a pulpit-that indeed is another consideration. But still, we live in a free country, and I cannot bring myself even to suspect that an English divine can possibly be liable to such compulsion. Ask your uncle however; for he is wiser in these things than either of us. I thank you for your two inscriptions, and like the last the best; the thought is just and fine; but the two last lines are sadly damaged by the monkish jingle of peperit and reperit. I have not yet translated them, nor do I promise to do it, though at some idle hour perhaps I may. In return I send you a translation of a simile in the Paradise Lost. Not having that poem at hand I cannot refer you to the book and page, but you may hunt for it if you think it worth your while. It begins "So when, from mountain tops, the dusky clouds Quales aërii montis de vertice nubes Cum surgunt, et jam Boreæ tumida ora quiêrunt, If you spy any fault in my Latin tell me, for I am sometimes in doubt, but as I told you, when you was here, I have not a Latin book in the world to consult or correct a mistake by; and some years have past since I was a schoolboy. An English Versification of a Thought that popped into my head about two months since. Sweet stream! that winds through yonder glade Apt emblem of a virtuous maid !— Silent and chaste she steals along Far from the world's gay, busy throng; With gentle, yet prevailing force, Intent upon her destined course: Now this is not so exclusively applicable to a maiden, as to be the sole property of your sister Shuttleworth. If you look at Mrs. Unwin, you will see that she has not lost her right to this just praise by marrying you. Your mother sends her love to all, and mine comes jogging along by the side of it. Yours, W. C. DEAR SIR, LII. TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. June 12, 1780. We accept it as an effort of your friendship, that you could prevail with yourself, in a time of such terror and distress, to send us repeated accounts of yours and Mrs. Newton's welfare: you supposed, with reason enough, that we should be apprehensive for your safety, situated as you were, apparently within the reach of so much danger. We rejoice that you have escaped it all, and that except the anxiety which you must have felt both for yourselves and others, you have suffered nothing upon this dreadful occasion. A metropolis in flames and a nation in ruins are subjects of contemplatiou for such a mind as yours, that will leave a lasting impression behind them. It is well that the design died in the execution, and will be buried, I hope, never to rise again, in the ashes of its own combustion. There is a melancholy pleasure in looking back upon such a scene, arising from a comparison of possibilities with facts; the enormous bulk of the intended mischief, with the abortive and partial accomplishment of it; much was done, more indeed than could have been supposed practicable in a well-regulated city, not unfurnished with a military force for its protection. But surprise and astonishment seem at first to have struck every nerve of the police with a palsy; and to have disarmed government of all its powers. I congratulate you upon the wisdom that withheld you from entering yourself a member of the Protestant Association. Your friends who did so have reason enough to regret their doing it, even though they should never be called upon. Innocent as they are, and they who know them cannot doubt of their being perfectly so, it is likely to bring an odium on the profession they make that will not soon be forgotten. Neither is it possible for a quiet, inoffensive man to discover, on a sudden, that his zeal has carried him into such company, without being to the last degree shocked at his imprudence. Their religion was an honourable mantle, like that of Elijah; but the majority wore cloaks of Guy Fawkes's time, and meant nothing so little as what they pretended. LIII. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. W. C. June 18, 1780. Reverend and dear William, the affairs of kingdoms, and the concerns of individuals, are variegated alike with the chequer-work of joy and sorrow. The news of a great acquisition in America has succeeded to terrible tumults in London; and the beams of prosperity are now playing upon the smoke of that conflagration which so lately terrified the whole land. These sudden changes, which are matter of every man's observation, and may therefore always be reasonably expected, serve to hold up the chin of despondency above water, and preserve mankind in general from the sin and misery of accounting existence a burden not to be endured-an evil we should be sure to encounter, if we were not warranted to look for a bright reverse of our most afflictive experiences. The Spaniards were sick of the war at the very commencement of it; and I hope that by this time the French themselves begin to find themselves a little indisposed, if not desirous of peace, which that restless and meddling temper of theirs is incapable of desiring for its own sake. But is it true that this detestable plot was an egg laid in France and hatched in London, under the influence of French corruption.? -Nam te scire, deos quonium propiús contingis, oportet. The offspring has the features of such a parent; and yet, without the clearest proof of the fact, I would not willingly charge upon a civilized nation what perhaps the most barbarous would abhor the thought of. I no sooner saw the surmise however in the paper, than I immediately began to write Latin verses upon the occasion. "An odd effect," you will say, of such a circumstance!"--but an effect, nevertheless, that whatever has at any time moved my passions, whether pleasantly or otherwise, has always had upon me; were I to express what I feel upon such occasions in prose, it would be verbose, inflated, and disgusting. I therefore have recourse to verse, as a suitable vehicle for the most vehement expressions my thoughts suggest to me. What I have written, I did not write so much for the comfort of the English, as for the mortification of the French. You will immediately perceive, therefore, that I have been labouring in vain, and that this bouncing explosion is likely to spend itself in the air. For I have no means of circulating what follows through all the French territories; and unless that or something like it can be done, my indignation will be entirely fruitless. Tell me how I can convey it into Sartine's pocket, or who will lay it upon his desk for me. But read it first, and unless you think it pointed enough to sting the Gaul to the quick, burn it. 66 In seditionem horrendam, corruptelis Gallicis, ut fertur, Londini nuper exortam. Perfida, crudelis, victa et lymphata furore, Gallia, vana struis! Precibus nunc utere! Vinces, I have lately exercised my ingenuity in contriving an exercise for yours, and have composed a Riddle, which, if it does not make you laugh before you have solved it, will probably do it afterwards. I |