TO MRS. KING, MY DEAR MADAM, Nov. 29, 1790. I value highly, as I ought and hope that I always shall, the favourable opinion of such men as Mr. Martyn: though, to say the truth, their commendations, instead of making me proud, have rather a tendency to humble me, conscious as I am that I am over-rated. There is an old piece of advice, given by an ancient poet and satirist, which it behoves every man, who stands well in the opinion of others, to lay up in his bosom :-Take care to be what you are reported to be. By due attention to this wise counsel, it is possible to turn the praises of our friends to good account, and to convert that which might prove an incentive to vanity into a lesson of wisdom. I will keep your good and respectable friend's letter very safely, and restore it to you the first opportunity. I beg, my dear Madam, that you will pre sent my best compliments to Mr. Martyn, when you shall either see him next or write to him. To that gentleman's enquiries I am, doubtless, obliged for the recovery of no small proportion of my subscription-list for in consequence of his application to Johnson, and very soon after it, I received from him no fewer than forty-five names, that had been omitted in the last he sent me, and that would probably never have been thought of more. No author, I believe, has a more inattentive or indolent bookseller: but he has every body's good word for liberality and honesty; therefore I must be content. The press proceeds at present as well as I can reasonably wish. A month has passed since we began, and I revised this morning the first sheet of the sixth Iliad. Mrs. Unwin begs to add a line from herself, so that I have only room to subjoin my best respects to Mr. King, and to say that I am truly, My dear Madam, yours, W. C. TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. MY DEAR FRIEND, Dec. 5, 1790. Sometimes I am too sad, and sometimes too busy, to write. Both these causes have concurred lately to keep me silent. But more than by either of these I have been hindered, since I received your last, by a violent cold, which oppressed me during almost the whole month of November. Your letter affected us with both joy and sorrow with sorrow and sympathy respecting poor Mrs. Newton, whose feeble and dying state suggests a wish for her release, rather than for her continuance; and joy on your account, who are enabled to bear, with so much resignation and cheerful acquiescence in the will of God, the prospect of a loss, which even they who know you best apprehended might prove too much for you. As to Mrs. Newton's interest in the best things, none, intimately acquainted with her as we have been, could doubt it. She doubted it indeed herself; but though it is not our duty to doubt, any more than it is our privilege, I have always considered the self-condemning spirit, to which such doubts are principally owing, as one of the most favourable symptoms of a nature spiritually renewed, and have many a time heard you make the same observation. [Torn off.] TO MRS. KING. MY DEAR MADAM, Dec. 31, 1790. Returning from my walk at half-past three, I found your welcome messenger in the kitchen; and entering the study, found also the beautiful present with which you had charged him.* We have all admired it (for Lady Hesketh was here to assist us in doing so;) and for my own particular, I return you my sincerest thanks, a very inadequate compensation. Mrs. Unwin, not satisfied to send you thanks only, begs your acceptance likewise of a turkey, which, though the figure of it might not much embellish a counterpane, may possibly serve hereafter to swell the dimensions of a feather-bed. I have lately been visited with an indisposi * A patch-work counterpane of her own making. |