serted by a certain Robert Heron, Esq., that Virgil never wrote a line worth reading. He is a pitiful plagiary; he is a servile imitator, a bungler in his plan, and has not a thought in his whole work that will bear examination. In short, he is anything but what the literati for two thousand years have taken him to be a man of genius and a fine writer. I fear that Homer's case is desperate. After the lapse of so many generations, it would be a difficult matter to elucidate a question which time and modern ingenuity together combine to puzzle. And I suppose that it were in vain for an honest plain man to inquire, if Homer did not write the Iliad and Odyssey, who did? The answer would undoubtedly be-it is no matter; he did not: which is all that I undertook to prove. For Virgil, however, there still remains some consolation. The very same Mr. Heron, who finds no beauties in the Æneid, discovers not a single instance of the sublime in Scripture. Particularly he says, speaking of the prophets, that Ezekiel, although the filthiest of all writers, is the best of them. He therefore, being the first of the learned who has reprobated even the style of the Scriptures, may possibly make the fewer proselytes to his judgment of the Heathen writer. For my own part at least, had I been accustomed to doubt whether the Eneid were a noble composition or not, this gentleman would at once have decided the question for me; and I should have been immediately assured that a work must necessarily abound in beauties that had the happiness to displease a censurer of the Word of God. What enterprises will not an inordinate passion for fame suggest? It prompted one man to fire the Temple of Ephesus; another, to fling himself into a volcano; and now has induced this wicked and unfortunate Squire either to deny his own feelings, or to publish to all the world that he has no feelings at all.* Mr. Scott is pestered with anonymous letters, but he conducts himself wisely; and the question whether he shall go to the Lock led to incorporate them as the genuine productions of Homer. Cowper justly ridicules so extravagant a supposition. ⚫ The playful spirit in which the writer adverts to this subject appears to have yielded afterwards to a feeling of indignation; the following lines in his own handwriting having been found by Dr. Johnson amongst his papers: ON THE AUTHOR OF LETTERS ON LITERATURE. The Genius of th' Augustan age His head among Rome's ruins rear'd; When literary Heron appear'd, Thou hast, he cried, like him of old Who set th' Ephesian dome on fire, And for traducing Virgil's name That rots, and stinks, and is abhorr'd. or not, seems hasting to a decision in the affirmative. We are tolerably well; and Mrs. Unwin adds to mine her affectionate remembrances of yourself and Mrs. Newton. Yours, my dear friend, W. C. The work of Mr. Heron is entitled, “Letters on Literature," in which he spares neither things sacred nor profane. The author seems to be a man of talent, but it is talent painfully misapplied. After calling Virgil a servile imitator of Homer, and indulging in various critiques, he thus concludes his animadversions. "Such is the Eneid, which the author, with good reason, on his deathbed, condemned to the flames; and, had it suffered that fate, real poetry would have lost nothing by it. I have said that, notwithstanding all, Virgil deserves his fame; for his fame is now confined to schools and academies; and his style (the pickle that has preserved his mummy from corruption) is pure and exquisite." Wit, employed at the expense of taste and sound judgment, can neither advance the reputation of its author, nor promote the cause of true literature. This supercilious treatment of the noble productions of classic genius too much resembles that period in the literary history of France, when the question was agitated (with Perrault at its head) as to the relative superiority of the ancients or moderns. It was at that time fashionable with one of the contending parties to decry the pretensions of the ancients. One of their writers exclaims, "Dépouillons ces respects serviles Peuvent encore être effacés."-LA MOTTE. We trust that this corrupt spirit will never infect the Lyceums of British literature; but sanctuaries of high-taught genius, chastened that they will be reserved ever to be the by a refined and discriminating taste, and embellished with the graces of a simple and noble eloquence, formed on the pure models of classic antiquity. TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.* Olney, Nov. 7, 1785. My dear Friend,-Your time being so much occupied as to leave you no opportunity for a word more than the needful, I am the more obliged to you that you have found leisure even for that, and thank you for the note above acknowledged. I know not at present what subject I could enter upon, by which I should not put you to an expense of moments that you can * Private correspondence. Olney, Nov. 9, 1785. My dearest Cousin,-Whose last most affectionate letter has run in my head ever since I received it, and which I now sit down to answer, two days sooner than the post will serve me. I thank you for it, and with a warmth for which I am sure you will give me credit, though I do not spend many words in describing it. I do not seek new friends, not being altogether sure that I should find them, but have unspeakable pleasure in being still beloved by an old one. I hope that now our correspondence has suffered its last interruption, and that we shall go down together to the grave, chatting and chirping as merrily as such a scene of things as this will permit. I am happy that my poems have pleased you. My volume has afforded me no such pleasure at any time, either while I was writing it or since its publication, as I have derived from yours and my uncle's opinion of it. I make certain allowances for partiality, and for that peculiar quickness of taste with which you both relish what you like, and, after all drawbacks upon those accounts duly made, find myself rich in the measure of your approbation that still remains. But, above all, I honor John Gilpin, since it was he who first encouraged you to write. I made him on purpose to laugh at, and he served his purpose well; but I am now indebted to him for a more valuable acquisition than all the laughter in the world amounts to, the recovery of my intercourse with you, which is to me inestimable. My benevolent and generons cousin, when I was once asked if I wanted anything, and given delicately to understand that the inquirer was ready to supply all my occasions, I thankfully and civilly, but positively declined the favor. I neither suffer, nor have suffered, any such inconveniences as I had not much rather en dure than come under obligations of that sort to a person comparatively with yourself a stranger to me. But to you I answer otherwise. I know you thoroughly, and the liberality of your disposition, and have that consummate confidence in the sincerity of your wish to serve me, that delivers me from all awkward constraint, and from all fear of trespassing by acceptance. To you, therefore, I reply, yes. Whensoever and whatsoever, and in what manner soever you please; and add moreover that my affection for the giver is such as will increase to me tenfold the satisfaction that I shall have in receiving. It is necessary, however, I should let you a little into the state of my finances, that you may not suppose them more narrowly cir cumscribed than they are. Since Mrs. Unwin and I have lived at Olney, we have had but one purse, although during the whole time, till lately, her income was nearly double mine. Her revenues indeed are now in some measure reduced, and not much exceed my own; the worst consequence of this is, that we are forced to deny ourselves some things which hitherto we have been better able to afford, but they are such things as neither life, nor the well-being of life, depend upon. My own income has been better than it is, but when it was best, it would not have enabled me to live as my connexions demanded that I should, had it not been combined with a better than itself, at least at this end of the kingdom. Of this I had full proof during three months that I spent in lodgings at Huntingdon, in which time, by the help of good management and a clear notion of economical matters, I contrived to spend the income of a twelvemonth. Now, my beloved cousin, you are in possession of the whole case as it stands. Strain no points to your own inconvenience or hurt, for there is no need of it, but indulge yourself in communicating (no matter what) that you can spare without missing it, since by so doing, you will be sure to add to the comforts of my life one of the sweetest that I can enjoy—a token and proof of your affection. In the affair of my next publication.* toward which you also offer me so kindly your assistance, there will be no need that you should help me in the manner that you propose. It will be a large work, consisting I should imagine of six volumes at least. The 12th of this month I shall have spent a year upon it, and it will cost me more than another. I do not love the booksellers well enough to make them a present of such a labor, but intend to publish by subscription Your vote and interest, my dear cousin, upon the occasion, if you please, but nothing more! I will trouble you with some papers of pro * His translation of Homer's Iliad. posals when the time sha" come, and am sure that you will circulate as many for me as you can. Now, my dear, I am going to tell you a secret. It is a great secret, that you must not whisper even to your cat. No creature is at this moment apprized of it but Mrs. Unwin and her son. I am making a new translation of Homer, and am on the point of finishing the twenty-first book of the Iliad. The reasons upon which I undertake this Herculean labor, and by which I justify an enterprise in which I seem so effectually anticipated by Pope, although in fact he has not anticipated me at all, I may possibly give you, if you wish for them, when I can find nothing more interesting to say. A period which I do not conceive to be very near! I have not answered many things in your letter, nor can do it at present for want of room. I cannot believe but that I should know you, notwithstanding all that time may have done. There is not a feature of your face, could I meet it upon the road by itself, that I should not instantly recollect. I should say, that is my cousin's nose, or those are her lips and her chin, and no woman upon earth can claim them but herself. As for me, I am a very smart youth of my years. I am not indeed grown gray so much as I am grown bald. No matter. There was more hair in the world than ever had the honor to belong to me. Accordingly having found just enough to curl a little at my ears, and to intermix with a little of my own that still hangs behind, I appear, if you see me in an afternoon, to have a very decent head-dress, not easily distinguished from my natural growth, which being worn with a small bag, and a black riband about my neck, continues to me the charms of my youth even on the verge of age. Away with the fear of writing too W. C. often. P. S.-That the view I give you of myself may be complete I add the two following items That I am in debt to nobody, and that I grow fat. There is no date to the following letter, but it evidently refers to this period of time. TO LADY HESKETH. me My dearest Cousin,-I am glad that I always loved you as I did. It releases froin any occasion to suspect that my present affection for you is indebted for its existence to any selfish considerations. No, I am sure I love you disinterestedly and for your own sake, because I never thought of you with any other sensations than those of the truest affection, even while I was under) the persuasion that I should never hear from you again. But, with my present feelings superadded to those that I always had for: you, I find it no easy matter to do justice to my sensations. I perceive myself in a state of mind similar to that of the traveller described in Pope's Messiah, who, as he passes through a sandy desert, starts at the sudden and unexpected souud of a waterfall.* You have placed me in a situation new to me, and in which I feel myself somewhat puzzled how to behave. At the same time I would not grieve you by putting a check upon your bounty, I would be as careful not to abuse it, as if I were a miser, and the question not about your money but my own. Although I do not suspect that a secret to you, my cousin, is any burden, yet, having maturely considered that point since I wrote my last, I feel myself altogether disposed to release you from the injunction to that effect under which I laid you. I have now made such a progress in my translation that I need neither fear that I shall stop short of the end, nor that any other rider of Pegasus should overtake me. Therefore, if at any time it should fall fairly in your way, or you should feel yourself invited to say I am so occupied, you have my poetship's free permission. Dr. Johnson read and recommended my first volume. W. C. TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT.† Olney, Nov. 9, 1785. My dear Friend,-You desired me to return your good brother the bishop's Charge, as soon as I conveniently could, and the weather having forbidden us to hope for the pleasure of seeing you and Mrs. Bagot with you this morning, I return it now, lest, as you told me that your stay in this country would be short, you should be gone before it could reach you. I wish as you do, that the Charge in question could find its way into all the parsonages in the nation. It is so generally applicable, and yet so pointedly enforced, that it deserves the most extensive spread. I find in it the happiest mixture of spiritual authority, the meekness of a Christian, and the good manners of a gentleman. It has convinced me that the poet who, like myself, shall take the liberty to pay the author of such valuable admonition a compliment, shall do at least as much honor to himself as to his subject. Yours, W. C. The following is the passage alluded to:- + Cowper was at Westminster school with five brothers of this name. He retained through life the friendship of the estimable character to whom this letter is addressed. charch Oxford; afterwards Bishop of Norwich, and daly Bishop of St. Asaph. 4 Lewis Bagot. D.D. He was formerly Dean of Christ TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.* Olney, Dec. 3, 1785. My dear Friend, I am glad to hear that there is such a demand for your last Narrative. If I may judge of their general utility by the effect that they have heretofore had upon me, there are few things more edifying than death-bed memoirs. They interest every reader, because they speak of a period at which all must arrive, and afford a solid ground of encouragement to survivors to expect the same, or similar, support and comfort, when it shall be their turn to die. So. its chief bane, impelled me so effectually to making hazardous applications, where you I also am employed in writing narrative, but not so useful. Employment, however, and with the pen, is through habit become essential to my well-being; and to produce always original poems, especially of considerable length, is not so easy. For some weeks after I had finished "The Task," and sent away the last sheet corrected, I was through necessity idle, and suffered not a little in my spirits for being so. being in such distress of mind as was hardly One day, supportable, I took up the Iliad; and, merely to divert attention, and with no more pre-schoolfellow Mr. Bagot, a brother of Lord I have lately had three visits from my old conception of what I was then entering upon Bagot, and of Mr. Chester of Chicheley. At than I have at this moment of what I shall his last visit he brought his wife with him, a be doing this day twenty years hence, trans- most amiable woman, to see Mrs. Unwin. lated the twelve first lines of it. The same I told him my purpose and my progress, necessity pressing me again, I had recourse He received the news with great pleasure; to the same expedient and translated more. immediately subscribed a draft of twenty Every day bringing its occasion for employ pounds; and promised me his whole heart, ment with it, every day consequently added and his whole interest, which lies principally something to the work; till at last I began together consist of about forty thousand renewed with my dear cousin, Lady Hesto reflect thus:-The Iliad and the Odyssey among people of the first fashion. My correspondence has lately also been verses. To translate these forty thousand keth, whom I ever loved as a sister, (for we verses will furnish me with occupation for a considerable time. I have already made who writes to me as affectionately as if she were in a manner brought up together,) and some progress, and I find it a most agreeable amusement. She also enters into my views Homer, in point of purity and interests upon this occasion with a is a most blameless writer; and though he warmth that gives me great encouragement. was not an enlightened man, has inter- The circle of her acquaintance is likewise spersed many great and valuable truths throughout both his poems. very extensive; and I have no doubt that In short, he is she will exert her influence to its utmost posin all respects a most venerable old gentle-sibilities among them. I have other strings man, by an acquaintance with whom no man can disgrace himself. The literati are all to my bow, (perhaps, as a translator of Ho agreed to a man that, although Pope has mer, I should say, to my lyre,) which I cannot here enumerate; but, upon the whole, given us two pretty poems under Homer's titles, there is not to be found in them they prospect seems promising enough. Í least portion of Homer's spirit, nor the least occasion, but intend to do it soon. have not yet consulted Johnson upon the resemblance of his manner. I will try therefore whether I cannot copy him somewhat more happily myself. I have at least the advantage of Pope's faults and failings, which, like so many buoys upon a dangerous coast, will serve me to steer by, and will make my chance for success more probable. These and many other considerations, but especially a mind that abhorred a vacuum as * Private correspondence. were so. My spirits are somewhat better than they were. In the course of the last month, I have perceived a very sensible amendment. The hope of better days seems again to dawn upon me; and I have now and then an intimation, though slight and transient, that God has not abandoned me forever. Having been for some years troubled with an inconvenient stomach; and lately with a stomach that will digest nothing without help; and we having reached the bottom of our own medical skill into which we have dived to little or no purpose; I have at length consented to consult Dr. Kerr, and expect to see him in a day or two. Engaged as I am and am likely to be, so long as I am capable of it, in writing for the press, I cannot well afford to entertain a malady that is such an enemy to all mental operations. This morning is beautiful, and tempts me forth into the garden. It is all the walk that I can have at this season, but not all the exercise. I ring a peal every day upon the dumbbells. I am, my dear friend, most truly, TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.* W. C. Olney, Dec. 10, 1785. My dear Friend.-What you say of my last volume gives me the sincerest pleasure. I have heard a like favorable report of it from several different quarters, but never any (for obvious reasons) that has gratified me more than yours. I have a relish for moderate praise, because it bids fair to be judicious; but praise excessive, such as our poor friend 's, (I have an uncle also who celebrates me exactly in the same language,)—such praise is rather too big for an ordinary swallow. I set down nine-tenths of it to the account of family partiality. I know no more than you what kind of a market my book has found; but this I believe, that had not Henderson died,† and had it been worth my while to have given him a hundred pounds to have read it in public, it would have been more popular than it is. I am at least very unwilling to esteem John Gilpin as better worth than all the rest that I have written, and he has been popular enough. Your sentiments of Pope's Homer agree perfectly with those of every competent judge with whom I have at any time conversed about it. I never saw a copy so unlike the original. There is not I believe in all the world to be found an uninspired poem so simple as those of Homer, nor in all the world a poem more bedizened with ornaments than Pope's translation of them. Accordingly, the sublime of Homer in the hands of Pope becomes bloated and tumid, and his description tawdry. Neither had Pope the faintest conception of those exquisite discriminations of character for which Homer is so remarkable. All his persons, and equally upon all occasions, speak in an inflated and strutting phraseology as Pope has managed them; although in the original the dignity of their utterance, even when they are most majestic, consists principally in the simplicity of their sentiments and of their language. Another censure I must needs pass upon our Anglo-Grecian, out of many that obtrude themselves upon me, but for which I have neither time to spare, nor room, which is, that with all his great abilities he was defective in his feelings to a degree that some passages in his own poems make it difficult to account for. No writer more pathetic than Homer, because none more natural; and because none less natural than Pope in his version of Homer, therefore than he none less pathetic. But I shall tire you with a theme with which I would not wish to cloy you beforehand. If the great change in my experience, of which you express so lively an expectation, should take place, and whenever it shall take place, you may securely depend upon receiving the first notice of it. But, whether you come with congratulations, or whether without them, I need not say that you and yours Unwin's love both to yourself and to Mrs. will always be most welcome here. Mrs. Newton joins itself as usual, and as warmly as usual, to that of Yours, my dear friend, Affectionately and faithfully, W. C. The following this moment occurs to me do not think it too sharp :— as a possible motto for the Messiah, if you Nunquam inducunt animum cantare, rogati; Injussi, nunquam desistunt. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. Olney, Dec. 24, 1785. My dear Friend,-You would have found a letter from me at Mr. -'s, according to your assignation, had not the post, setting out two hours sooner than the usual time, prevented me. The Odyssey that you sent has but one fault, at least but one that I have discovered, which is that I cannot read it. The very attempt, if persevered in, would soon make me as blind as Homer was himself. I am now in the last book of the Iliad, shall be obliged to you therefore for a more legible one by the first opportunity. I wrote to Johnson lately, desiring him to give me advice and information on the subject of proposals for a subscription, and he desired me in his answer not to use that mode of publication, but to treat with him, adding that he could make me such offers as (he believed) I should approve. I have replied to his letter, but abide by my first purpose. Having occasion to write to Mr.. * John Thornton, Esq. *con |