than could at first be imagined, because the opportunities of improvement are continual.

A public education is often recommended as the most effectual remedy for that bashful and awkward restraint, so epidemical among the youth of our country. But I verily believe, that instead of being a cure, it is often the cause of it. For seven or eight years of his life, the boy has hardly seen or conversed with a man, or a woman, except the maids at his boarding-house. A gentleman or a lady are consequently such novelties to him, that he is perfectly at a loss to know what sort of behaviour he should preserve before them. He plays with his buttons, or the strings of his hat, he blows his nose, and hangs down his head, is conscious of his own deficiency to a degree that makes him quite unhappy, and trembles lest any one should speak to him, because that would quite overwhelm him. Is not all this miserable shyness the effect of his education? To me it appears to be so. If he saw good company every day, he would never be terrified at the sight of it, and a room full of ladies and gentlemen would alarm him no more than the chairs they sit on. Such is the effect of custom.

I need add nothing further on this subject, because I believe little John is as likely to be exempted from this weakness as most young gentlemen we shall meet with. He seems to have his father's spirit in this respect, in whom I could never discern the least trace of bashfulness, though I have often heard him complain of it. Under your management, and the influence of your example, I think he can hardly fail to escape it. If he does, he escapes that which has made many a man uncomfortable for life; and ruined not a few, by forcing them into mean and dishonourable company, where only they could be free and cheerful.

Connexions formed at school are said to be lasting, and often beneficial. There are two or three stories of this kind upon record, which would not be so constantly cited as they are, whenever this subject happens to be mentioned, if the chronicle that preserves their remembrance had many besides to boast of. For my own part, I found such friendships, though warm enough in their commencement, surprisingly liable to extinction; and of seven or eight whom I had selected for intimates out of about three hundred, in ten years' time not one was left me. The truth is, that there may be, and often is, an attachment of one boy to another that looks very like a friendship; and while they are in circumstances that enable them mutually to oblige and to assist each other, promises well and bids fair to be lasting. But they are no sooner separated from each other, by entering into the world at large, than other connexions and new employments, which they no longer share together, efface the remembrance of what passed in earlier days, and they become strangers to each other for ever. Add to this, the man frequently differs so much from the boy; his principles, manners, temper, and conduct, undergo so great an alteration, that we no

longer recognize in him our old playfellow, but find him utterly unworthy and unfit for the place he once held in our affections.

To close this article, as I did the last, by applying myself immediately to the present concern-little John is happily placed above all occasion for dependance on all such precarious hopes, and need not be sent to school in quest of some great man in embryo, who may possibly make his fortune.

Yours, my dear friend,

W. C.

LXIX.-To MRS. NEWTON.

DEAR MADAM,

Oct. 5, 1780.

When a lady speaks, it is not civil to make her wait a week for an answer. I received your letter within this hour, and foreseeing that the garden will engross much of my time for some days to come, have seized the present opportunity to acknowledge it. I congratulate you on Mr. Newton's safe arrival at Ramsgate, making no doubt but that he reached that place without difficulty or danger, the road thither from Canterbury being so good as to afford room for neither. He has now a view of the element with which he was once so familiar, but which I think he has not seen for many years. The sight of his old acquaintance will revive in his mind a pleasing recollection of past deliverances, and when he looks at him from the beach, he may say-" You have formerly given me trouble enough, but I have cast anchor now, where your billows can never reach me."-It is happy for him that he can say so.

Mrs. Unwin returns you many thanks for your anxiety on her account. Her health is considerably mended upon the whole, so as to afford us a hope that it will be re-established.

Our love attends you.

LXX. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.

Nov. 9, 1780.

I wrote the following last summer. The tragical occasion of it really happened at the next house to ours. I am glad when I can find a subject to work upon. A lapidary, I suppose, accounts it a laborious part of his business to rub away the roughness of the stone; but it is my amusement, and if after all the polishing I can give it, it discovers some little lustre, I think myself well rewarded for my pains.*

I shall charge you a halfpenny a-piece for every copy I send you, the short as well as the long. This is a sort of after-clap you little expected, but I cannot possibly afford them at a cheaper rate. If this method of raising money had occurred to me sooner, I should have made the bargain sooner: but I am glad I have hit upon it at last.

* Verses on a Goldfinch, starved to death in a cage.

It will be a considerable encouragement to my muse, and act as a powerful stimulus to my industry. If the American war should last much longer, I may be obliged to raise my price, but this I shall not do without a real occasion for it-it depends much upon Lord North's conduct in the article of supplies. If he imposes an additional tax on any thing that I deal in, the necessity of this measure, on my part, will be so apparent, that I dare say you will not dispute it.

W. C.

The following letter to Mr. Hill contains a poem already printed in the Works of Cowper; but the reader will probably be gratified, in finding a little favourite piece of pleasantry introduced to him, as it was originally dispatched by the author, for the amusement of a friend.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

LXXI.-To JOSEPH HILL, Esq.

Dec. 25, 1780.

Weary with rather a long walk in the snow, I am not likely to write a very sprightly letter, or to produce any thing that may cheer this gloomy season, unless I have recourse to my pocket-book, where perhaps I may find something to transcribe, something that was written before the sun had taken leave of our hemisphere, and when I was less fatigued than I am at present.

Happy is the man who knows just so much of the law, as to make himself a little merry now and then with the solemnity of juridical proceedings. I have heard of common-law judgments before now, indeed have been present at the delivery of some, that, according to my poor apprehension, while they paid the utmost respect to the letter of the statute, have departed widely from the spirit of it; and being governed entirely by the point of law, have left equity, reason, and common sense behind them at an infinite distance. You will judge whether the following report of a case drawn up by myself be not a proof and illustration of this satirical assertion.

NOSE-PLAINTIFF ;

EYES-DEFENDANTS.

BETWEEN Nose and Eyes a sad contest arose,
The Spectacles set them unhappily wrong;
The point in dispute was, as all the world knows,
To which the said Spectacles ought to belong.

So the Tongue was the lawyer, and argued the cause
With a great deal of skill, and a wig full of learning;
While Chief Baron Ear sat to balance the laws,

So fam'd for his talents at nicely discerning.

"In behalf of the Nose, it will quickly appear,

And your Lordship," he said, "will undoubtedly find,
That the Nose has had Spectacles always in wear,
Which amounts to possession time out of mind

Then holding the Spectacles up to the Court,

"Your Lordship observes, they are made with a straddle,
As wide as the ridge of the nose is, in short,
Design'd to sit close to it, just like a saddle.

Again, would your Lordship a moment suppose,
(Tis a case that has happen'd, and may be again)
That the visage or countenance had not a nose,

Pray who would, or who could, wear the Spectacles then?

On the whole it appears, and my argument shows,
With a reasoning the Court will never condemn,
That the Spectacles plainly were made for the Nose,
And the Nose was as plainly intended for them."

Then, shifting his side, as a lawyer knows how,
He pleaded again in behalf of the Eyes:
But what were his arguments few people know,
For the Court did not think they were equally wise.

So his Lordship decreed, with a grave, solemn tone
Decisive and clear, without one if or but,
"That whenever the Nose put his Spectacles on,
By daylight or candlelight-Eyes should be shut!"

Yours, affectionately,

W. C.

LXXII.-TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.

December, 1780.

MY DEAR FRIEND, Poetical reports of law cases are not very common, yet it seems to me desirable that they should be so. Many advantages would accrue from such a measure. They would, in the first place, be more commonly deposited in the memory, just as linen, grocery, or other such matters, when neatly packed, are known to occupy less room, and to lie more conveniently in any trunk, chest, or box, to which they may be committed. In the next place, being divested of that infinite circumlocution, and the endless embarrassment in which they are involved by it, they would become surprisingly intelligible in comparison with their present obscurity. And lastly, they would by this means be rendered susceptible of musical embellishment, and, instead of being quoted in the country with that dull monotony which is so wearisome to bystanders, and frequently lulls even the judges themselves to sleep, might be rehearsed in recitation; which would have an admirable effect in keeping the attention fixed and lively, and could not fail to disperse that heavy atmosphere of sadness and gravity which hangs over the jurisprudence of our country. I remember many years ago being informed by a relation of mine, who in his youth had applied himself to the study of the law, that one of his fellow students, a gentleman of sprightly parts, and very respectable talents of the poetical kind, did actually engage in the prosecution of such a design; for reasons, I suppose, somewhat

H

similar to, if not the same with, those I have now suggested.

He began with Coke's Institutes; a book so rugged in its style, that an attempt to polish it seemed an Herculean labour, and not less arduous and difficult than it would be to give the smoothness of the rabbit's fur to the prickly back of a hedgehog. But he succeeded to admiration, as you will perceive by the following specimen, which is all that my said relation could recollect of the performance.

You have an ear for music, and a taste for verse, which saves me the trouble of pointing out, with a critical nicety, the advantages of such a version. I proceed, therefore, to what I at first intended, and to transcribe the record of an adjudged case thus managed, to which indeed what I premised was intended merely as an introduction*.

W. C.

a case.

LXXIII.-To JOSEPH HILL, Esq.

Feb. 15, 1781.

MY DEAR FRIend, I am glad you were pleased with my report of so extraordinary If the thought of versifying the decisions of our courts of justice had struck me while I had the honour to attend them, it would perhaps have been no difficult matter to have compiled a volume of such amusing and interesting precedents; which, if they wanted the eloquence of the Greek or Roman oratory, would have amply compensated that deficiency by the harmony of rhyme and

metre.

Your account of my uncle and your mother gave me great pleasure. I have long been afraid to inquire after some in whose welfare I always feel myself interested, lest the question should produce a painful answer. Longevity is the lot of so few, and is so seldom rendered comfortable by the associations of good health, and good spirits, that I could not very reasonably suppose either your relations or mine so happy in those respects as it seems they are. May they continue to enjoy those blessings so long as the date of life shall last. I do not think that in these costermonger days, as I have a notion Falstaff calls them, an antediluvian age is at all a desirable thing; but to live comfortably while we do live, is a great matter, and comprehends in it every thing that can be wished for on this side the curtain that hangs between time and eternity. Farewell, my better friend than any I have to boast of, either among the Lords—or Gentlemen of the House of Commons.

W. C.

*This letter concluded with the poetical law-case of Nose, plaintiff,-Eyes. defendants.