W. C. should have left it, when we have the pleasure of| Weston has not been without its tragedies since seeing you. I want you to see them soon again, you left us; Mrs. Throckmorton's piping bull-finch that a little consuetudo may wear off restraint; has been eaten by a rat, and the villain left nothing and you may be able to improve the advantage you but poor Bully's beak behind him. It will be a have already gained in that quarter. I pitied you wonder if this event does not, at some convenient for the fears which deprived you of your uncle's com- time, employ my versifying passion. Did ever pany, and the more having suffered so much by fair lady, from the Lesbia of Catullus to the prethose fears myself. Fight against that vicious fear, sent day, lose her bird and find no poet to comfor such it is, as strenuously as you can. It is the memorate the loss? worst enemy that can attack a man destined to the forum-it ruined me. To associate as much as possible with the most respectable company, for good sense and good breeding, is, I believe, the only, at least I am sure it is the best remedy. The society of men of pleasure will not cure it, but rather leaves us more exposed to its influence in company of better persons. Now for the Dog and the Water-Lily.* TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. MY DEAR FRIEND, W. C. Weston, Sept. 25, 1787. Say what is the thing by my Riddle design'd I EXPECT your answer and without a fee.-The half hour next before breakfast I devote to you. The moment Mrs. Unwin arrives in the study, be what I have written much or little, I shall make my bow, and take leave. If you live to be a judge, as if I augur right you will, I shall expect to hear of a walking circuit. TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. MY DEAR FRIEND, Weston, Nov. 30, 1788. YOUR letter, accompanying the books with which you have favoured me, and for which I return you a thousand thanks, did not arrive till yesterday. I shall have great pleasure in taking now and then a peep at my old friend Vincent Bourne; the neatest of all men in his versification, though when I was under his ushership, at Westminster, the most slovenly in his person. He was so inattentive to his boys, and so indifferent whether they brought him good or bad exercises, or none at all, that he seemed determined, as he was the best, so to be the last Latin poet of the Westminster line; a plot which, I believe, he executed very successfully; for I have not heard of any who has at all deserved to be compared with him. We have had hardly any rain or snow since you left us; the roads are accordingly as dry as in the middle of summer, and the opportunity of walking much more favourable. We have no season in my mind so pleasant as such a winter: I was shocked at what you tell me of and I account it particularly fortunate that such Superior talents, it seems, give no security for pro- it proves, my cousin being with us. She is in priety of conduct; on the contrary, having a nat- good health, and cheerful, so are we all; and this ural tendency to nourish pride, they often betray I say, knowing you will be glad to hear it, for you the possessor into such mistakes, as men more have seen the time when this could not be said of moderately gifted never commit. Ability there- all your friends at Weston. We shall rejoice to fore is not wisdom, and an ounce of grace is a bet-see you here at Christmas; but I recollected when ter guard against gross absurdity than the bright- I hinted such an excursion by word of mouth, you est talents in the world. gave me no great encouragement to expect you. I rejoice that you are prepared for transcript Minds alter, and yours may be of the number of work: here will be plenty for you. The day on those that do so; and if it should, you will be enwhich you shall receive this, I beg you will re-tirely welcome to us all. Were there no other member to drink one glass at least to the success reason for your coming than merely the pleasure of the Iliad, which I finished the day before yes- it will afford to us, that reason alone would be terday, and yesterday began the Odyssey. It will sufficient; but after so many toils, and with so be some time before I shall perceive myself travel- many more in prospect, it seems essential to your ing in another road; the objects around me are well-being that you should allow yourself a respite, at present so much the same; Olympus, and a which perhaps you can take as comfortably (I am council of gods, meet me at my first entrance. To sure as quietly) here as any where. tell you the truth, I am weary of heroes and deities, and, with reverence be it spoken, shall be glad for variety's sake, to exchange their company for that of a Cyclops. • Cowper's Poems. The ladies beg to be remembered to you with all possible esteem and regard; they are just come down to breakfast, and being at this moment extremely talkative, oblige me to put an end to my letter. Adieu. W. C. TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ. Weston-Underwood, Dec. 2, 1788. MY DEAR FRIEND, I TOLD you lately that I had an ambition to introduce to your acquaintance my valuable friend, Mr. Rose. He is now before you. You will find him a person of genteel manners and agreeable conversation. As to his other virtues and good qualities, which are many, and not often found in men of his years, I consign them over to your own discernment, perfectly sure that none will escape you. I give you joy of each other, and remain, my dear old friend, most truly yours, W. C. TO ROBERT SMITH, ESQ. Weston-Underwood, Dec. 20, 1788. MY DEAR SIR, TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. MY DEAR SIR, The Lodge, Jan. 19, 1789. I HAVE taken, since you went away, many of the walks which we have taken together; and none of them, I believe, without thoughts of you. I have, though not a good memory, in general, yet a good local memory, and can recollect, by the help of a tree or a stile, what you said on that particular spot. For this reason I purpose, when the summer is come, to walk with a book in my pocket; what I read at my fireside I forget, but what I read under a hedge, or at the side of a pond, that pond and that hedge will always bring to my remembrance; and this is a sort of memoria technica, which I would recommend to you if I did not know that you have no occasion for it. I am reading Sir John Hawkins, and still hold the same opinion of his book, as when you were here. There are in it, undoubtedly, some awkwardnesses of phrase, and, which is worse, here MRS. UNWIN is in tolerable health, and adds and there some unequivocal indications of a vanity not easily pardonable in a man of his years; but her warmest thanks to mine for your favour, and on the whole I find it amusing, and to me at least, for your obliging inquiries. My own health is better than it has been for many years. Long to whom every thing that has passed in the litetime I had a stomach that would digest nothing, rary world within these five-and-twenty years is and now nothing disagrees with it; an amend- new, sufficiently replete with information. Mr. Throckmorton told me about three days since, ment for which I am, under God, indebted to the that it was lately recommended to him by a sendaily use of soluble tartar, which I have never sible omitted these two years. I am still, as you may man, as a book that would give him great suppose, occupied in my long labour. The Iliad insight into the history of modern literature, and has nearly received its last polish. And I have modern men of letters, a commendation which I advanced in a rough copy as far as to the ninth really think it merits. Fifty years hence, perbook of the Odyssey. My friends are some of haps, the world will feel itself obliged to him. TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. W. C. them in haste to see the work printed, and my answer to them is-"I do nothing else, and this I do day and night-it must in time be finished." My thoughts, however, are not engaged to Homer only. I can not be so much a poet as not MY DEAR SIR, The Lodge, Jan. 24, 1789. to feel greatly for the King, the Queen, and the WE have heard from my cousin in Norfolkcountry. My speculations on these subjects are street; she reached home safely, and in good time. indeed melancholy, for no such tragedy has be- An observation suggests itself, which, though I fallen in my day. We are forbidden to trust in have but little time for observation making, I man; I will not therefore say I trust in Mr. Pitt: must allow myself time to mention. Accidents, —but in his counsels, under the blessing of Provi- as we call them, generally occur when there seems dence, the remedy is, I believe, to be found, if a least reason to expect them; if a friend of ours traremedy there be. His integrity, firmness, and vels far in different roads, and at an unfavourable sagacity, are the only human means that seem season, we are reasonably alarmed for the safety adequate to the great emergence. of one in whom we take so much interest; yet You say nothing of your own health, of which how seldom do we hear a tragical account of such I should have been happy to have heard favoura- a journey! It is, on the contrary, at home, in our bly. May you long enjoy the best. Neither Mrs. yard or garden, perhaps in our parlour, that disUnwin nor myself have a sincerer, or a warmer aster finds us; in any place, in short, where we wish, than for your felicity. seem perfectly out of the reach of danger. The lesson inculcated by such a procedure on the part of Providence towards us seems to be that of perpetual dependence. I am, my dear sir, W. C. Having preached this sermon, I must hasten to a close; you know that I am not idle, nor can I afford to be so. I would gladly spend more time with you, but by some means or other this day has hitherto proved a day of hindrance and confusion. W. C. TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT. MY DEAR FRIEND, know not: but imagine that any time after the month of June you will be sure to find her with us, which I mention, knowing that to meet you will add a relish to all the pleasures she can find at Weston. Nothing is more certain than that when I wrote the line, God made the country, and man made the town, When I wrote those lines on the Queen's visit, I thought I had performed well; but it belongs to me, as I have told you before, to dislike whatever I write when it has been written a month. The performance was therefore sinking in my esteem, Weston, Jan. 29, 1789. when your approbation of it, arriving in good time, I SHALL be a better, at least a more frequent buoyed it up again. It will now keep possession correspondent, when I have done with Homer. I of the place it holds in my good opinion, because am not forgetful of any letters that I owe, and it has been favoured with yours; and a copy will least of all forgetful of my debts in that way to certainly be at your service whenever you choose you; on the contrary, I live in a continual state to have one. of self-reproach for not writing more punctually; but the old Grecian, whom I charge myself never o neglect, lest I should never finish him, has at present a voice that seems to drown all other demands, and many to which I could listen with I had not the least recollection of that very simore pleasure than even to his Os rotundum. Imilar one, which you quote from Hawkins Brown. am now in the eleventh book of the Odyssey, con- It convinces me that critics (and none more than versing with the dead. Invoke the Muse in my Warton, in his notes on Milton's minor poems), behalf, that I may roll the stone of Sisyphus with have often charged authors with borrowing what some success. To do it as Homer has done it is, they drew from their own fund. Brown was an I suppose, in our verse and language, impossible; entertaining companion when he had drunk his but I will hope not to labour altogether to as little bottle, but not before; this proved a snare to him, purpose as Sisyphus himself did. and he would sometimes drink too much; but I Though I meddle little with politics, and can know not that he was chargeable with any other find but little leisure to do so, the present state of irregularities. He had those among his intimates things unavoidably engages a share of my attention. But as they say, Archimedes, when Syracuse was taken, was found busied in the solution of a problem, so come what may, I shall be found morals. translating Homer. Sincerely yours, W. C. who would not have been such had he been otherwise viciously inclined; the Duncombes, in particular, father and son, who were of unblemished W. C. TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. MY DEAR SIR, TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. MY DEAR FRIEND, The Lodge, June 5, 1789. I AM going to give you a deal of trouble, but London folks must be content to be troubled by country folks; for in London only can our strange necessities be supplied. You must buy for me, if you please, a cuckoo clock; and now I will tell you where they are sold, which, Londoner as you are, it is possible you may not know. They are sold, I am informed, at more houses than one, in The Lodge, May 20, 1789. FINDING myself, between twelve and one, at the end of the seventeenth book of the Odyssey, I give the interval between the present moment and the time of walking, to you. If I write letters before I sit down to Homer, I feel my spirits too flat for poetry; and too flat for letter writing if I address that narrow part of Holborn which leads into myself to Homer first; but the last I choose as the least evil, because my friends will pardon my dulmess, but the public will not. Broad St. Giles. It seems they are well going clocks, and cheap, which are the two best recommendations of any clock. They are made in Germany, and such numbers of them are annually imported, that they are become even a considerable article of commerce. I had been some days uneasy on your account, when yours arrived. We should have rejoiced to nave seen you, would your engagements have permitted: but in the autumn I hope, if not before, we I return you many thanks for Boswell's Tour. shall have the pleasure to receive you. At what I read it to Mrs. Unwin after supper, and we find time wo may expect Lady Hesketh, at present I it amusing. There is much trash in it, as there TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. AMICO MIO, The Lodge, June 20, 1789. must always be in every narrative that relates indiscriminately all that passed. But now and then the Doctor speaks like an oracle, and that makes amends for all. Sir John was a coxcomb, and I AM truly sorry that it must be so long before Boswell is not less a coxcomb, though of another we can have an opportunity to meet. My cousin, kind. I fancy Johnson made coxcombs of all his in her last letter but one, inspired me with other friends, and they in return made him a coxcomb; expectations, expressing a purpose, if the matter for with reverence be it spoken, such he certainly could be so contrived, of bringing you with her: was, and, flattered as he was, he was sure to be I was willing to believe that you had consulted together on the subject, and found it feasible. A Thanks for your invitation to London, but un-month was formerly a trifle in my account, but at less London can come to me, I fear we shall never my present age I give it all its importance, and meet. I was sure that you would love my friend, when you should once be well acquainted with him; and equally sure that he would take kindly to you. Now for Homer. W. C. TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT. MY DEAR FRIEND, 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 forever-but 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. Weston, June 16, 1789. You will naturally suppose that the letter in which you announced your marriage occasioned me some concern, though in my answer I had the wisdom to conceal it. The account you gave me of the object of your choice was such as left me at liberty to form conjectures not very comfortable to myself, if my friendship for you were indeed sincere. I have since however been sufficiently consoled. Your brother Chester has informed me, that you have married not only one of the most agreeable, but one of the most accomplished women in the kingdom. It is an old maxim, that it is better to exceed expectation than to disappoint it, and with this maxim in your view it was, no doubt, that you dwelt only on circumstances of disJuly 18, 1789. advantage, and would not treat me with a recital MANY thanks, my dear madam, for your extract of others which abundantly overweigh them. I now from George's letter. I retain but little Italian, congratulate not you only, but myself, and truly yet that little was so forcibly mustered by the conrejoice that my friend has chosen for his fellow-sciousness that I was myself the subject, that I traveller through the remaining stages of his jour-presently became master of it. I have always said ney, a companion who will do honour to his dis- that George is a poet, and I am never in his comcernment, and make his way, so far as it can de-pany but I discover proofs of it; and the delicate pend on a wife to do so, pleasant to the last. address by which he has managed his complimen Having read both Hawkins and Boswell, I now think myself almost as much a master of Johnson's character as if I had known him personally, and can not 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 an history of Milton or Shakspeare, as they have given of Johnson-O, how desirable! TO MRS. THROCKMORTON. My verses on the Queen's visit to London either tary mention of me, convinces me of it still more have been printed, or soon will be, in the World. than ever. Here are a thousand poets of us, whe The finishing to which you objected I have alter-have impudence enough to write for the public, ed, and have substituted two new stanzas instead but amongst the modest men who are by diffidence of it. Two others also I have struck out, another restrained from such an enterprise are those who critic having objected to them. I think I am a would eclipse us all. I wish that George would very tractable sort of a poet. Most of my frater- make the experiment; I would bind on his laurels nity would as soon shorten the noses of their chil- with my own hand. dren because they were said to be too long, as thus dock their compositions in compliance with the opinion of others. I beg that when my life shall be written hereafter, my authorship's ductability of temper may not be forgotten! I am, my dear friend, ever yours, W. C. Your gardener has gone after his wife, but hav ing neglected to take his lyre, alias fiddle, with him, has not yet brought home his Eurydice. Your clock in the hall has stopped, and (strange to tell!) · it stopped at the sight of the watch maker. For he only looked at it, and it has been motionles ever since. Mr. Gregson is gone, and the Hall is and a great instance of good fortune I account it a desolation. Pray don't think any place pleasant in such a world as this, to have expected such a that you may find in your rambles, that we may pleasure thrice without being once disappointed. see you the sooner. Your aviary is all in good Add to this wonder as soon as you can by making health. I pass it every day, and often inquire at yourself of the party. 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." Adieu, W. C. TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. W.C. MY DEAR FRIEND, If you have any book, that you think will make pleasant evening reading, bring it with you. I The Lodge, July 23, 1789. now read Mrs. Piozzi's Travels to the ladies after You do well, my dear sir, to improve your op- supper, and shall probably have finished them beportunity; to speak in the rural phrase, this is fore we shall have the pleasure of seeing you. It your sowing time, and the sheaves you look for can is the fashion, I understand, to condemn them. never be yours unless you make that use of it. But we who make books ourselves are more merThe colour of our whole life is generally such as ciful to book-makers. I would that every fastidithe three or four first years, in which we are our ous judge of authors were himself obliged to write; own masters, make it. Then it is that we may there goes more to the composition of a volume be said to shape our own destiny, and to treasure than many critics imagine. I have often wondered up for ourselves a series of future successes or dis-that the same poet who wrote the Dunciad should appointments. Had I employed my time as wise- have written these lines, The mercy I to others show, ly 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 im- Alas! for Pope, if the mercy he showed to others portance in society; and a situation in which my was the measure of the mercy he received! he was friends would have been better pleased to see me. the less pardonable too, because experienced in all But three years misspent in an attorney's office the difficulties of composition. were almost of course followed by several more I scratch this between dinner and tea; a time equally misspent in the Temple, and the conse- when I can not write much without disordering quence has been, as the Italian epitaph says, "Sto my noddle, and bringing a flush into my face. qui."-The only use I can make of myself now, You will excuse me therefore if, through respect at least the best, is to serve in terrorem to others, for the two important considerations of health and when occasion may happen to offer, that they may beauty, I conclude myself, 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. Ever yours, W. C. TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. MY DEAR FRIEND, Weston, Sept. 24, 1789. Having said this, I shall next with my whole You left us exactly at the wrong time. Had heart invite you hither, and assure you that I look you staid till now, you would have had the plea forward to approaching August with great pleasure of hearing even my cousin say—“I am cold." sure, because it promises me your company. Af--And the still greater pleasure of being warm ter a little time (which we shall wish longer) spent yourself; for I have had a fire in the study ever with us, you will return invigorated to your studies, and pursue them with the more advantage. In the mean time you have lost little, in point of season, by being confined to London. Incessant rams, and meadows under water, have given to the summer the air of winter, and the country has been deprived of half its beauties. 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. JHe is witty, intelligent, and agreeable beyond the common measure of men who are so. But it is It is time to tell you that we are well, and often the constant effect of a spirit of party to make make you our subject. This is the third meeting those hateful to each other, who are truly amiable that my cousin and we have had in this country; in themselves. |