Care, vale! Sed non æternùm, care, valeto! Having an English translation of it by me, I send it, though it may be of no use. Farewell!" But not for ever," Hope replies, "Trace but his steps, and meet him in the skies!" The stanzas that I sent you are maiden ones, having never been seen by any eye but your mother's and your own. If you send me franks, I shall write longer letters. sicut et nos valemus ! Amate, sicut et nos amamus. Valete, 56. TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ. DISTRESS OF THE LACE-MAKERS THEIR PETITION. July 8, 1780. MON AMI, If you ever take the tip of the Chancellor's ear between your finger and thumb, you can hardly improve the opportunity to better purpose, than if you should whisper into it the voice of compassion and lenity to the lace-makers. I am an eye-witness of their poverty, and do know that hundreds in this little town are upon the point of starving, and that the most unremitting industry is but barely sufficient to keep them from it. I know that the bill by which they would have been so fatally affected is thrown out: but Lord Stormont threatens them with another; and if another like it should pass, they are undone.* We lately sent a petition to Lord Dartmouth; I signed it, and am sure the contents are true. The purport of it was to inform him that there are very near one thousand two hundred lace-makers in this beggarly town, the most of whom had reason enough, while the bill was in agitation, to look upon every loaf they bought, as the last they should ever be able to earn. I can never think it good policy to incur the certain inconvenience * This was a proposed tax upon candles, which would have put lights beyond the means of these poor people. The session of Parliament closed on the day on which this letter was written. Lord Stormont was Secretary of State, having succeeded Lord Suffolk, who died in 1779. of ruining thirty thousand, in order to prevent a remote and possible damage, though to a much greater number. The measure is like a scythe, and the poor lace-makers are the sickly crop that trembles before the edge of it. The prospect of a peace with America, is like the streak of dawn in their horizon; but this bill is like a black cloud behind it, that threatens their hope of a comfortable day with utter extinction. I did not perceive till this moment, that I had tacked two similes together,- —a practice which, though warranted by the example of Homer, and allowed in an epic poem, is rather luxuriant and licentious in a letter. Lest I should add another, I conclude. W. C. 57. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. ON EPIGRAMS, WITH SPECIMENS COWPER'S OWN MANNER OF WRITING POETRY, AND HIS MOTIVES. July 11, 1780. I ACCOUNT myself sufficiently commended for my Latin exercise, by the number of translations it has undergone. That which you distinguished in the margin by the title of "better," was the production of a friend; and, except that for a modest reason he omitted the third couplet, I think it a good one. To finish the group, I have translated it myself; and though I would not wish you to give it to the world, for more reasons than one, especially lest some French hero should call me to account for it, I add it on the other side. An author ought to be the best judge of his own meaning; and, whether I have succeeded or not, I cannot but wish, that where a translator is wanted, the writer was always to be his own. False, cruel, disappointed, stung to the heart, Bids the low street and lofty palace blaze. Her sons too weak to vanquish us alone, She hires the worst and basest of our own. Kneel, France! a suppliant conquers us with ease, I have often wondered that Dryden's illustrious epigram on Milton (in my mind the second best that ever was made) has never been translated into Latin, for the admiration of the * See Letter 52. learned in other countries. I have at last presumed to venture upon the task myself. The great closeness of the original, which is equal in that respect to the most compact Latin I ever saw, made it extremely difficult. Tres tria sed longè distantia, sæcula vates Tertius ut fieret, consociare duos.' * I have not one bright thought upon the Chancellor's recovery; nor can I strike off so much as one sparkling atom from that brilliant subject. It is not when I will, nor upon what I will, but as a thought happens to occur to me; and then I versify, whether I will or not. I never write but for my amusement; and what I write is sure to answer that end, if it answers no other. If, besides this purpose, the more desirable one of entertaining you be effected, I then receive double fruit of my labour, and consider this produce of it as a second crop, the more valuable, because less expected. But when I have once remitted a composition to you, I have done with it. It is pretty certain that I shall never read it or think of it again. From that moment I have constituted you sole judge of its accomplishments, if it has any, and of its defects, which it is sure to have. For this reason I decline answering the question with which you concluded your last, and cannot persuade myself to enter into a critical examen of the two pieces upon Lord Mansfield's loss, either with respect to their intrinsic or comparative merit; and indeed after having rather discouraged that use of them which you had designed, there is no occasion for it. W. C. * The well known original was written under the portrait of Milton, in Dryden's own copy of Paradise Lost. Even under the disadvantage of a more diffuse idiom, it is intensely more vigorous than Cowper's Latin version: Three poets, in three distant ages born, SILENT ADVANCE OF AGE WANT OF A SUBJECT. July 20, 1780. MY DEAR COUSIN,-Mr Newton having desired me to be of the party, I am come to meet him. You see me sixteen years older at the least, than when I saw you last;* but the effects of time seem to have taken place rather on the outside of my head, than within it. What was brown, is become grey, but what was foolish, remains foolish still. Green fruit must rot before it ripens, if the season is such as to afford it nothing but cold winds and dark clouds, that interrupt every ray of sunshine. My days steal away silently, and march on (as poor mad Lear would have made his soldiers march) as if they were shod with felt ;† not so silently but that I hear them; yet were it not that I am always listening to their flight, having no infirmity that I had not when I was much younger, I should deceive myself with an imagination that I am still young. I am fond of writing as an amusement, but do not always find it one. Being rather scantily furnished with subjects that are good for anything, and corresponding only with those. who have no relish for such as are good for nothing, I often find myself reduced to the necessity, the disagreeable necessity, of writing about myself. This does not mend the matter much; for though in a description of my own condition, I discover abundant materials to employ my pen upon, yet as the task is not very agreeable to me, so I am sufficiently aware that it is likely to prove irksome to others. A painter who should confine himself in the exercise of his art to the drawing of his own picture, must be a wonderful coxcomb, if he did not soon grow sick of his occupation; and be peculiarly fortunate, if he did not make others as sick as himself. Remote as your dwelling is from the late scene of riot and confusion, I hope that, though you could not but hear the report, you heard no more, and that the roarings of the mad multitude did not reach you. That was a day of terror to the innocent, and the present is a day of still greater terror to the The reader will remark, that the first letter addressed to this lady, is dated in March, 1766; and, except his brother, Cowper had seen none of his relations for nearly two years previously. † It were a delicate stratagem, to shoe A troop of horse with felt.-Act iv. sc. 6. guilty. The law was for a few moments like an arrow in the quiver, seemed to be of no use, and did no execution; now it is an arrow upon the string, and many who despised it lately, are trembling as they stand before the point of it. I have talked more already than I have formerly done in three visits -you remember my taciturnity, never to be forgotten by those who knew me: not to depart entirely from what might be, for aught I know, the most shining part of my character, I here shut my mouth, make my bow, and return to Olney. W. C. 59. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. A DUMB DUET SPECIMEN OF JURY TRIAL. July 27, 1780. MY DEAR FRIEND,-As two men sit silent, after having exhausted all their topics of conversation, one says, "It is very fine weather;" and the other says, "Yes;" one blows his nose, and the other rubs his eyebrows-by the way, this is very much in Homer's manner:-such seems to be the case between you and me. After a silence of some days, I wrote you a long something, that, I suppose, was nothing to the purpose, because it has not afforded you materials for an answer. Nevertheless, as it often happens in the case above stated, one of the distressed parties, being deeply sensible of the awkwardness of a dumb duet, breaks silence again, and resolves to speak, though he has nothing to say. So it fares with me: I am with you again in the form of an epistle, though, considering my present emptiness, I have reason to fear that your only joy upon the occasion will be, that it is conveyed to you in a frank. When I began, I expected no interruption. But if I had expected interruptions without end, I should have been less disappointed. First came the barber; who, after having embellished the outside of my head, has left the inside just as unfurnished as he found it. Then came Olney Bridge, not into the house, but into the conversation. The cause relating to it was tried on Tuesday at Buckingham. The judge directed the jury to find a verdict favourable to Olney. The jury consisted of one knave and eleven fools. The last mentioned followed the afore-mentioned, as sheep follow a bell-wether, and decided in direct opposition to the said judge. Then a flaw was discovered in the indictment. The indictment was |