maining stages of his journey, a companion who will do honor to his discernment, and make his way, so far as it can depend on a wife to do so, pleasant to the last. My verses on the Queen's visit to London either have been printed, or soon will be, in the "World." The finishing to which you objected I have altered, and have substituted two new stanzas instead of it. Two others also I have struck out, another critic having objected to them. I think I am a very tractable sort of a poet. Most of my fraternity would as soon shorten the noses of their children because they were said to be too long, as thus dock their compositions in compliance with the opinions of others. I beg that when my life shall be written hereafter, my authorship's ductibility of temper may not be forgotten. I am, my dear friend, TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. W. C. The Lodge, June 20, 1789. Amico Mio,-I am truly sorry that it must be so long before we can have an opportunity to meet. My cousin in her last letter but one inspired me with other expectations, expressing a purpose, if the matter could be so contrived, of bringing you with her: I was willing to believe that you had consulted together on the subject, and found it feasible. A month was formerly a trifle in my account, but at my present age I give it all its importance, and grudge that so many months should yet pass in which I have not even a glimpse of those I love, and of whom, the course of nature considered, I must ere long take leave foreverbut I shall live till August. Many thanks for the cuckoo which arrived perfectly safe and goes well, to the amusement and amazement of all who hear it. Hannah lies awake to hear it, and I am not sure that we have not others in the house that admire his music as much as she. Having read both Hawkins and Boswell, I now think myself as much a master of Johnson's character as if I had known him personally, and cannot but regret that our bards of other times found no such biographers as these. They have both been ridiculed, and the wits have had their laugh; but such a history of Milton or Shakspeare as they have given of Johnson-O how desirable!* W. C. TO MRS. THROCKMORTON. July 18, 1789. Many thanks, my dear madam, for your extract from George's letter. I retain but little Italian, yet that little was so forcibly mustered by the consciousness that I was myself the subject, that I presently became master of it. I have always said that George is a poet, and I am never in his company but I discover proofs of it, and the delicate address by which he has managed his complimentary mention of me convinces me of it still more than ever. Here are a thousand poets of us who have impudence enough to write for the public; but amongst the modest men who terprise are those who would eclipse us all. are by diffidence restrained from such an enI wish that George would make the experiment, I would bind on his laurels with my own hand.* Your gardener has gone after his wife, but, having neglected to take his lyre, alias fiddle, with him, has not brought home his Eurydice. Your clock in the hall has stopped, and (strange to tell!) it stopped at sight of the watchmaker: for he only looked at it, and it has been motionless ever since. Mr. Gregson is gone, and the Hall is a desolation. Pray don't think any place pleasant that you may find in your rambles, that we may see you the sooner. Your aviary is all in good health; I pass it every day, and often inquire at the lattice; the inhabitants of it send their duty, and wish for your return. I took notice of the inscription on your seal, and had we an artist here capable of furnishing me with another, you should read on mine, “ Encore une lettre." You do well, my dear sir, to improve your opportunity; to speak in the rural phrase, this is your sowing time, and the sheaves you look for can never be yours unless you make that use of it. The color of our whole "Homer," says a popular critic, "is not more de cidedly the first of heroic poets-Shakspeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists-Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers." “A book," observes Mr. Croker, "to which the world refers as a manual of amusement, a repository of wit, wisdom, and morals, and a lively and faithful history of the manners and literature of England, during a period hardly second in brilliancy, and superior in importance even to the Augustan age of Anne. *This truly amiable and accomplished person after wards became Sir George Throckmorton, Bart. life is generally such as the three or four first years in which we are our own masters make it. Then it is that we may be said to shape our own destiny, and to treasure up or ourselves a series of future successes or disappointments. Had I employed my time as wisely as you, in a situation very similar to yours, I had never been a poet perhaps; but I might by this time have acquired a character of more importance in society, and a situation in which my friends would have been better pleased to see me. But three years misspent in an attorney's office, were almost of course followed by several more equally misspent in the Temple, and the consequence has been, as the Italian epitaph says, "Sto qui." The only use I can make of myself now, at least the best, is to serve in terrorem to others, when occasion may happen to offer, that they may escape (so far as my admonitions can have any weight with them) my folly and my fate. When you feel yourself tempted to relax a little of the strictness of your present discipline, and to indulge in amusement incompatible with your future interests, think on your friend at Weston. Having said this, I shall next, with my whole heart, invite you hither, and assure you that I look forward to approaching August with great pleasure, because it promises me your company. After a little time (which we shall wish longer) spent with us, you will return invigorated to your studies, and pursue them with more advantage. In the meantime, you have lost little, in point of season, by being confined to London. Incessant rains and meadows under water have given to the summer the air of winter, and the country has been deprived of half its beauties. It is time to tell you that we are all well, and often make you our subject. This is the third meeting that my cousin and we have had in this country, and a great instance of good fortune I account it in such a world as this to have expected such a pleasure thrice, without being once disappointed. Add to this wonder as soon as you can by making yourself of the party. TO MRS. KING.* W. C. August 1, 1789. My dear Madam,-The post brings me no letters that do not grumble at my silence. Had not you, therefore, taken me to task as roundly as others, I should have concluded you perhaps more indifferent to my epistles than the rest of my correspondents; of whom one says, "I shall be glad when you have finished Homer; then possibly you will find * Private correspondence. a little leisure for an old friend." Another says "I don't choose to be neglected, unless you equally neglect every one else." Thus I hear of it with both ears, and shall, till I appear in the shape of two great quarto volumes, the composition of which, I confess, engrosses me to a degree that gives my friends, to whom I feel myself much obliged for their anxiety to hear from me, but too much reason to complain. Johnson told Mr. Martyn the truth, but your inference from that truth is not altogether so just as most of your conclusions are. Instead of finding myself the more at leisure because my long labor draws to a close, I find myself the more occupied. As when a horse approaches the goal, he does not, unless he be jaded, slacken his pace, but quickens it; even so it fares with me. The end is in view; I seem almost to have reached the mark, and the nearness of it inspires me with fresh alacrity. But, be it known to you, that I have still two books of the Odyssey before me, and when they are finished, shall have almost the whole eight-and-forty to revise. Judge then, my dear madam, if it is yet time for me to play, or to gratify myself with scribbling to those I love. No: it is still necessary that waking I should be all absorbed in Homer, and that sleeping I should dream of nothing else. I am a great lover of good paintings, but no connoisseur, having never had an opportunity to become one. In the last forty years of my life, I have hardly seen six pictures that were worth looking at; for I was never a frequenter of auctions, having never had any spare money in my pocket, and the public exhibitions of them in London had hardly taken place when I left it. My cousin, who is with us, saw the gentleman whose pieces you mention, on the top of a scaffold, copying a famous picture in the Vatican. She has seen some of his performances, and much admires them. You have had a great loss, and a loss that admits of no consolation, except such as will naturally suggest itself to you, such, I mean, as the Scripture furnishes. We must all leave, or be left; and it is the circumstance of all others that makes a long life the least desirable, that others go while we stay, till at last we find ourselves alone, like a tree on a hill-top. Accept, my dear madam, mine and Mrs. Unwin's best compliments to yourself and Mr. King, and believe me, however unfrequent in telling you that I am so, Affectionately yours, TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. W. C. Weston, August 8, 1789. My dear Friend,-Come when you will, or when you can, you cannot come at a wrong time; but we shall expect you on the day mentioned. If you have any book that you think will make pleasant evening reading, bring it with you. I now read Mrs. Piozzi's* Travels to the ladies after supper, and shall probably have finished them before we shall have the pleasure of seeing you. It is the fashion, I understand, to condemn them. But we, who make books ourselves, are more merciful to book-makers. I would that every fastidious judge of authors were himself obliged to write: there goes more to the composition of a volume than many critics imagine. I have often wondered that the same poet who wrote the "Dunciad," should have written these lines, The mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me. Alas! for Pope, if the mercy he showed to others, was the measure of mercy he received! He was the less pardonable, too, because experienced in all the difficulties of composition. 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, TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ. W. C. August 12, 1789. My dear Friend, I rejoice that you and Mrs. Hill are so agreeably occupied in your retreat.j August, I hope, will make us amends for the gloom of its many wintry predecessors. We are now gathering from our meadows, not hay, but muck; such stuff as deserves not the carriage, which yet it must have, that the after-crop may have leave to grow. The Ouse has hardly deigned to run in his channel since the summer began. * Formerly Mrs. Thrale, the well-known friend of Dr. Johnson, and resident at Streatham. Her second mar riage was considered to be imprudent. She wrote Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson, and was also the authoress of the beautiful tale entitled, "The Three Warnings," beginning, "The tree of deepest root is found Unwilling most to leave the ground," &c. &c. It cost Lord Lyttleton twenty years to write the Life and History of Henry II. The historian Gibbon was twelve years in completing his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," and Adam Smith occupied ten years in producing his "Wealth of Nations." A stronger instance can scarcely be quoted of the mental labor employed in the composition of a work, than what is recorded of Boileau, who occupied eleven months in writing his Equivoque,” consisting only of 346 lines, and afterwards spent three years in revising it. Cowper sometimes wrote only five or six lines in a day. + Private correspondence. At Wargrave, near Henley-on-Thames. My Muse were a vixen if she were not always ready to fly in obedience to your commands. But what can be done? I can write nothing in the few hours that remain to me of this day that will be fit for your purpose, and unless I could dispatch what I write by to-morrow's post, it would not reach you in time. I must add, too, that my friend, the vicar of the next parish,* engaged me, the day before yesterday, to furnish him by next Sunday with a hymn, to be sung on the occasion of his preaching to the children of the Sunday-school:† of which hymn I have not yet produce a syllable. I am somewhat in the case of lawyer Dowling, in "Tom Jones;" and could I split myself into as many poets as there are muses, could find employment for them all. Adieu, my dear friend. I am ever yours, TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. W. C. August 16, 1789. My dear Friend,-Mrs. Newton and you are both kind and just in believing that I do not love you less when I am long silent. Perhaps a friend of mine, who wishes me to have him always in my thoughts, is never so effectually possessed of the accomplishment of that wish as when I have been long his debtor; for then I think of him not only every day, but day and night, and all day long. But I confess at the same time that my thoughts of you will be more pleasant to myself when I shall have exonerated my conscience by giving you the letter so long your due. Therefore, here it comes: little worth your having, but payment, such as it is, that you have a right to expect, and that is essential to my own tranquillity. That the Iliad and the Odyssey should have proved the occasion of my suspending my correspondence with you, is a proof how little we foresee the consequences of what we publish. Homer, I dare say, hardly at all suspected that at the fag-end of time two personages would appear, the one yeleped Sir Newton and the other Sir Cowper, who, loving each other heartily, would nevertheless suffer the pains of an interrupted intercourse, Olney. We subjoin an extract from this Sunday-school hymn, for the benefit of our younger readers. "Hear, Lord, the song of praise and prayer, From infants, made the public care, Thy holy Sabbaths more. That we may listen with our heart, + Private correspondence. nis poems the cause. So, however, it has happened; and though it would not, I suppose, extort from the old bard a single sigh, if he knew it, yet to me it suggests the serious reflection above-mentioned. An author by profession had need narrowly to watch his pen, lest a line should escape it which by possibility may do mischief, when he has been long dead and buried. What we have done, when we have written a book, will never be known till the day of judgment: then the account will be liquidated, and all the good that it has occasioned, and all the evil, will witness either for or against us. I am now in the last book of the Odyssey, yet have still, I suppose, half a year's work before me. The accurate revisal of two such voluminous poems can hardly cost me less. I rejoice, however, that the goal is in prospect; for, though it has cost me years to run this race, it is only now that I begin to have a glimpse of it. That I shall never receive any proportionable pecuniary recompense for my long labors is pretty certain; and as to any fame that I may possibly gain by it, that is a commodity that daily sinks in value, in measure as the consummation of all things approaches. In the day when the lion shall dandle the kid, and a little child shall lead them, the world will have lost all relish for the fabulous legends of antiquity, and Homer and his translator may budge off the stage together. W. C. Ever yours, Cowper's remarks on the subject of authors, in the above letter, are truly impressive and demand attention. If it indeed be true, that authors are responsible for their writings, as well as for their personal conduct, (of which we presume there can be no reasonable doubt,) how would the tone of literature be raised, and the pen often be arrested in its course, if this conviction were fully realized to the conscience! Their writings are, in fact, the record of the operations of their minds, and are destined to survive, so far as metallic types and literary talent can ensure durability and success. Nor is it less true that the character of a nation will gen tracing the guilt of their lives and the ruin of their hopes to the fatal influence of the books which they had read, what image of horror can equal the sensation of such a moment, save the despair of hearing the irrevocable sentence, "Depart from me, ye workers of iniquity; I never knew you!" TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. Weston, Sept. 21, 1789. My dear Friend,-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. w. c. The power of poetry to embellish the most simple incident is pleasingly evinced in the following letter, by the Homeric muse of Cowper. TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ, circumstantial way, Weston, Oct. 4, 1789. My dear Friend,-The hamper is come, and come safe; and the contents I can affirm, on my own knowledge, are excellent. It chanced that another hamper and box came by the same conveyance, all which I unpacked and expounded in the hall, my cousin sitting meantime on the stairs, spectatress of the business. We diverted ourselves with imagining the manner in which Homer would have described the scene. Detailed in his it would have furnished erally be moulded by the spirit of its authors. materials for a paragraph of considerable Allowing, therefore, the extent of this power-length in an Odyssey. ful influence, we can conceive the possibility of authors, at the last great day, undergoing the ordeal of a solemn judicial inquiry, when the subject for investigation will be, how far their writings have enlarged the bounds of useful knowledge, or subserved the cause of piety and truth. If, instead of those great ends being answered, it shall appear that the foundations of religion have been undermined, the cause of virtue weakened, and the heart made more accessible to error; if, too, a dread array of witnesses shall stand forth, The straw-stuff'd hamper with his ruthless steel I should rejoice to be the hero of such a ta c in the hands of Homer. You will remember, I trust, that, when the state of your 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 vigor. 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 possessed of a library. Adieu ! W. C. 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 hap piness that a new year can possibly bring with it, I remain, with Mrs. Unwin's best respects, yours, my dear friend, with all sinW. C. cerity, My paper mourns for the death of Lord Cowper, my valuable cousin, and much my benefactor. TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT. My dear Walter,-I know that you are too reasonable a man to expect anything like punctuality of correspondence from a translater of Homer, especially from one who is a doer also of many other things at the same time; for I labor 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. You 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. 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 neighbors 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 Chicheley. 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 The character of this work is given by Cowper him Belf in a subsequent letter to his friend Walter Bagot. 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 Callima chus (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 con vince him of the contrary. I learn also from the same Villoison, that Pisistratus, who was a sort of Mæcenas 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 par cel of the poems of that bard, would resort |