Mr. I especially having so fair an occasion (I forget my-itself make a volume so large as the last, or as a self, there is another in the first book to Mr. bookseller would wish. I say this, because when I Throckmorton,) but the compliment I mean is to had sent Johnson five thousand verses, he applied It is however so managed, that for a thousand more. Two years since, I began a nobody but himself can make the application, and piece which grew to the length of two hundred, you, to whom I disclose the secret; a delicacy on and there stopped. I have lately resumed it, and my part, which so much delicacy on his obliged (I believe) shall finish it. But the subject is fruitme to the observance of! ful, and will not be comprised in a smaller comWhat there is of a religious cast in the volume pass than seven or eight hundred verses. It turns have thrown towards the end of it, for two rea- on the question, whether an education at school or sons-first that I might not revolt the reader at at home be preferable, and I shall give the preferhis entrance and secondly, that my best impres-ence to the latter. I mean that it shall pursue the sions might be made last. Were I to write as track of the former. That is to say, that it shall many volumes as Lopez de Vega, or Voltaire, not one of them would be without this tincture. If the world like it not, so much the worse for them. I make all the concessions I can, that I may please them, but I will not please them at the expense of my conscience. visit Stock in its way to publication. My design also is to inscribe it to you. But you must see it first; and if, after having seen it, you should have any objection, though it should be no bigger than the tittle of an i, I will deny myself that pleasure, and find no fault with your refusal. I have not been My descriptions are all from nature. Not one without thoughts of adding John Gilpin at the of them second-handed. My delineations of the tail of all. He has made a good deal of noise in heart are from my own experience. Not one of the world, and perhaps it may not be amiss to show, them borrowed from books, or in the least degree that though I write generally with a serious inconjectural. In my numbers, which I have varied tention, I know how to be occasionally merry. as much as I could (for blank verse without variety of numbers is no better than bladder and string) I have imitated nobody, though sometimes, perhaps, there may be an apparant resemblance; because at the same time that I would not imitate, I have not effectually differed. The Critical Reviewers charged me with an attempt at humour. John having been more celebrated upon the score of humour than most pieces that have appeared in modern days, may serve to exonerate me from the imputation: but in this article I am entirely under your judgment, and mean If the work can not boast a regular plan (in to be set down by it. All these together will make which respect however I do not think it altogether an octavo volume like the last. I should have told indefensible) it may yet boast, that the reflections you, that the piece which now employs me, is in are naturally suggested always by the preceding rhyme. I do not intend to write any more blank. passage, and that except the fifth book, which is rather of a political aspect, the whole has one tendency; to discountenance the modern enthusiasm after a London life, and to recommend rural ease and leisure, as friendly to the cause of piety and virtue. If it pleases you I shall be happy, and collect from your pleasure in it an omen of its general acceptance. Yours, my dear friend, W. C. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. It is more difficult than rhyme, and not so amusing in the composition. If, when you make the offer of my book to Johnson, he should stroke his chin, and look up to the ceiling and cry-' Humph!'anticipate him (I beseech you) at once, by saying, that you know I should be sorry that he should undertake for me to his own disadvantage, or that my volume should be in any degree pressed upon him. I make him the offer merely because I think he would have reason to complain of me, if I did not.' But that punctilio once satisfied, it is a matter of indifference to me what publisher sends me forth. If Longman should have diffiMY DEAR WILLIAM, Oct. 20, 1784. culties, which is the more probable, as I underYOUR letter has relieved me from some anxiety, stand from you that he does not in these cases see and given me a good deal of positive pleasure. I with his own eyes, but will consult a brother poet, have faith in your judgment, and an implicit confi- take no pains to conquer them. The idea of bedence in the sincerity of your approbation. The ing hawked about, and especially of your being writing of so long a poem is a serious business; the hawker, is insupportable. Nichols (I have and the author must know little of his own heart, heard) is the most learned printer of the present who does not in some degree, suspect himself of day. He may be a man of taste as well as learnpartiality to his own production; and who is he ing; and I suppose that you would not want a that would not be mortified by the discovery, that gentleman usher to introduce you. He prints the he had written five thousand lines in vain? The Gentleman's Magazine, and may serve us, if the poem however which you have in hand, will not of others should decline; if not, give vouself no farther trouble about the matter. I may possibly no flight from them. But solicitations to sin, that envy authors, who can afford to publish at their address themselves to our bodily senses, are, I beown expense, and in that case should write no lieve, seldom conquered in any other way. more. But the mortification would not break my heart. I proceed to your corrections, for which I most unaffectedly thank you, adverting to them in their order. I can easily see that you may have very reasonable objections to my dedicatory proposal. You are a clergyman, and I have banged your order. You are a child of alma mater, and I have banged her too. Lay yourself therefore under no constraints that I do not lay you under, but consider yourself as perfectly free. Yours, W. C. TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON Oct. 30, 1784. Page 140.-Truth generally, without the article the, would not be sufficiently defined. There are many sorts of truth, philosophical, mathematical, With our best love to you all, I bid you heartily moral, &c.; and a reader not much accustomed to farewell. I am tired of this endless scribblement hear of religious or scriptural truth, might possi- Adieu! bly, and indeed easily doubt what truth was particularly intended. I acknowledge that grace, in my use of the word, does not often occur in poetry. So neither does the subject which I handle. Every subject has its own terms, and religious MY DEAR FRIEND, ones take theirs with most propriety from the scrip- I ACCEDE most readily to the justness of your ture. Thence I take the word grace. The sar- remark on the subject of the truly Roman heroism castic use of it in the mouths of infidels I admit, of the Sandwich islanders. Proofs of such prowess but not their authority to proscribe it, especially I believe are seldom exhibited by a people who as God's favour in the abstract has no other have attained to a high degree of civilization. Reword, in all our language, by which it can be ex-finement and profligacy of principle are too nearly pressed. allied, to admit of any thing so noble; and I quesPage 150.-Impress the mind faintly, or not at tion whether any instances of faithful friendship, all.—I prefer this line, because of the interrupted like that which so much affected you in the berun of it, having always observed that a little un-haviour of the poor savage, were produced even by evenness of this sort, in a long work, has a good the Romans themselves, in the latter days of the effect, used, I mean sparingly, and with discretion. Page 127.-This should have been noted first, but was overlooked. Be pleased to alter for me thus, with the difference of only one word from the alteration proposed by you We too are friends to royalty. We love empire. They had been a nation whose virtues it is impossible not to wonder at. But Greece, which was to them what France is to us, a Pandora's box of mischief, reduced them to her own standard, and they naturally soon sunk still lower. Religion in this case seems pretty much out of the question. To the production of such heroism, undebauched nature herself is equal. When Italy was a land of heroes, she knew no more of the true God than her cicisbèos and her fiddlers know now; and inYou observed probably, in your second reading, deed it seems a matter of indifference, whether a that I allow the life of an animal to be fairly taken man be born under a truth which does not inaway, when it interferes either with the interest or fluence him, or under the actual influence of a convenience of man. Consequently snails, and all lie; or if there be any difference between the two reptiles that spoil our crops, either of fruit or grain, cases, it seems to be rather in favour of the latter: may be destroyed, if we can catch them. It gives for a false persuasion, such as the Mahometan for me real pleasure, that Mrs. Unwin so readily un- instance, may animate the courage, and furnish derstood me. Blank verse, by the unusual arrange- motives for the contempt of death, while despisers ment of the words, and by the frequent infusion of the true religion are punished for their folly by of one line into another, not less than by the style, being abandoned to the last degrees of depravity. which requires a kind of tragical magnificence, can Accordingly we see a Sandwich islander sacrinot be chargeable with much obscurity, must rather ficing himself to his dead friend, and our Christian be singularly perspicuous, to be so easily compre- seamen and mariners, instead of being impressed hended. It is my labour, and my principal one, by a sense of his generosity, butchering him with to be as clear as possible. You do not mistake a persevering cruelty that will disgrace them for me, when you suppose that I have great respect ever: for he was a defenceless, unresisting enemy, for the virtue that flies temptation. It is that sort who meant nothing more than to gratify his love of prowess which the whole train of scripture calls for the deceased. To slay him in such circumus to manifest, when assailed by sensual evil. In- stances was to murder him, and with every aggra terior mischiefs must be grappled with. There is vation of the crime that can be imagined. I am again at Johnson's in the shape of a poem to his friends. The influence of one I have felt in blank verse, consisting of six books, and called myself, for which none of them would blame me The Task. I began it about this time twelve-I mean the desire of surprising agreeably. And month, and writing sometimes an hour in the day, if I have denied myself this pleasure in your insometimes half a one, and sometimes two hours, stance, it was only to give myself a greater, by have lately finished it. I mentioned it not sooner, eradicating from your mind any little weeds of susbecause almost to the last I was doubtful whether picion, that might still remain in it, that any man I should ever bring it to a conclusion, working living is nearer to me than yourself. Had not often in such distress of mind, as, while it spurred this consideration forced up the lid of my strong me to the work, at the same time threatened to box like a lever, it would have kept its contents disqualify me for it. My bookseller I suppose will with an invisible closeness to the last; and the first be as tardy as before. I do not expect to be born news that either you or any of my friends would into the world till the month of March, when I have heard of the Task, they would have received and the crocuses shall peep together. You may from the public papers. But you know now, that assure yourself that I shall take my first opportu- neither as a poet, nor a man, do I give to any man nity to wait on you. I mean likewise to gratify a precedence in my estimation at your expense. myself by obtruding my muse upon Mr. Bacon. Adieu, my dear friend! we are well, and love Yours and Mrs. Newton's, W. C. you. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. MY DEAR FRIEND Νου. 1, 1784. I am proceeding with my new work (which at present I feel myself much inclined to call by the name of Tirocinium) as fast as the muse permits. It has reached the length of seven hundred lines, and will probably receive an addition of two or three hundred more. When you see Mr. perhaps you will not find it difficult to procure from him half a dozen franks, addressed to yourself, and dated the fifteenth of December, in which case, they will all go to the post filled with my lucubrations, on the evening of that day. I do not name an earlier, because I hate to be hurried; and Johnson can not want it sooner than, thus managed, it will reach him. WERE I to delay my answer, I must yet write without a frank at last, and may as well therefore write without one now, especially feeling, as I do, a desire to thank you for your friendly offices so well performed. I am glad for your sake, as well as for my own, that you succeeded in the first in- I am not sorry that John Gilpin, though hitherto stance, and that the first trouble proved the last. I he has been nobody's child, is likely to be owned at am willing too to consider Johnson's readiness to last. Here and there I can give him a touch that accept a second volume of mine, as an argument I think will mend him, the language in some that at least he was no loser by the former. I col- places not being quite so quaint and old-fashioned lect from it some reasonable hope that the volume as it should be; and in one of the stanzas there is in question may not wrong him neither. My a false rhyme. When I have thus given the finishimagination tells me (for I know you interest your- ing stroke to his figure, I mean to grace him with self in the success of my productions) that your two mottos, a Greek and a Latin one, which, heart fluttered when you approached Johnson's when the world shall see that I have only a little door, and that it felt itself discharged of a burthen one of three words to the volume itself, and none when you came out again. You did well to men- to the books of which it consists, they will perhaps tion it at the T- ―s; they will now know that understand as a stricture upon that pompous disyou do not pretend a share in my confidence, play of literature, with which some authors take whatever be the value of it, greater than you ac- occasion to crowd their titles. Knox, in particutually possess. I wrote to Mr. Newton by the last lar, who is a sensible man too, has not, I think, post, to tell him that I was gone to the press fewer than half a dozen to his Essays. again. He will be surprised and perhaps not pleased. But I think he can not complain, for he keeps his own authorly secrets without participating them with me. I do not think myself in the least injured by his reserve; neither should I, if he were to publish a whole library without favouring me with any previous notice of his intentions. In THE Task, as you know, is gone to the press: these cases it is no violation of the laws of friend- since it went I have been employed in writing anoship not to communicate, though there must be a ther poem, which I am now transcribing, and which friendship where the communication is made. But in a short time I design shall follow. It is entimany reasons may concur in disposing a writer to tled, Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools: the bukeep his work secret, and none of them injurious siness and purpose of it are, to censure the want Y Adieu, W. C. [TO THE REV. WILLIAM BULL.j November 8, 1784. of discipline, and the scandalous inattention to morals, that obtain in them, especially in the largest; and to recommend private tuition as a mode of education preferable on all accounts; to call upon fathers to become tutors of their own sons, where that is practicable; to take home a domestic tutor, where it is not; and if neither can be done, to place them under the care of such a man, as he to whom I am writing, some rural parson, whose attention is limited to a few. MY DEAR FRIEND, TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. MY DEAR FRIEND, Nov. 27, 1784. lication, and all the pleas that you urge in behalf ALL the interest that you take in my new pubof your right to my confidence, the moment I had read your letter, struck me as so many proofs of your regard; of a friendship, in which distance and time make no abatement. But it is difficult to adjust opposite claims to the satisfaction of all parties. I have done my best, and must leave it TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ. to your candour to put a just interpretation upon November, 1784. all that has passed, and to give me credit for it, as To condole with you on the death of a mother a certain truth, that whatever seeming defects, in aged eighty-seven would be absurd-rather, there- point of attention and attachment to you, my confore, as is reasonable, I congratulate you on the duct on this occasion may have appeared to have almost singular felicity of having enjoyed the com- been chargeable with, I am in reality as clear of pany of so amiable and so near a relation so long, all real ones, as you would wish to find me. Your lot and mine in this respect have been very I send you enclosed, in the first place, a copy of different, as indeed in almost every other. Your the advertisement to the reader, which accounts mother lived to see you rise, at least to see you for my title, not otherwise easily accounted forcomfortably established in the world. Mine, dy- secondly, what is called an argument, or a summaing when I was six years old, did not live to see ry of the contents of each book, more circumstan me sink in it. You may remember with pleasure, tial and diffuse by far than that which I have sent while you live, a blessing vouchsafed to you so to the press. It will give you a pretty accurate long; and I, while I live, must regret a comfort of acquaintance with my matter, though the tenons which I was deprived so early. I can truly say, and mortises, by which the several passages are that not a week passes (perhaps I might with equal connected, and let into each other, can not be exveracity say a day) in which I do not think of her. plained in a syllabus--and lastly, an extract as you Such was the impression her tenderness made up- desired. The subject of it I am sure will please on me, though the opportunity she had for show-you, and as I have admitted into my description ing it was so short. But the ways of God are no images but what are scriptural, and have aimequal--and when I reflect on the pangs she would ed as exactly as I could at the plain and simple have suffered, had she been a witness of all mine, sublimity of the scripture language, I have hopes I see more cause to rejoice, than to mourn, that the manner of it may please you too. As far as she was hidden in the grave so soon. the numbers and diction are concerned, it may serve We have, as you say, lost a lively and sensible pretty well for a sample of the whole. But the neighbour in Lady Austen, but we have been long subjects being so various, no single passage can in accustomed to a state of retirement within one de-all respects be a specimen of a book at large. gree of solitude, and being naturally lovers of still My principal purpose is to allure the reader, by life, can relapse into our former duality without character, by scenery, by imagery, and such poetibeing unhappy at the change. To me indeed a cal embellishments, to the reading of what may third is not necessary, while I can have the com- profit him. Subordinately to this, to combat that panion I have had these twenty years. predeliction in favour of a metropolis, that beggars I am gone to the press again; a volume of mine and exhausts the country, by evacuating it of all will greet your hands some time either in the course its principal inhabitants: and collaterally, and as of the winter, or early in the spring. You will far as is consistent with this double intention, to find it perhaps on the whole more entertaining than have a stroke at vice, vanity, and folly, wherever the former, as it treats a great variety of subjects, I find them. I have not spared the universities. and those, at least the most, of a sublunary kind. A letter which appeared in the General Evening It will consist of a poem in six books, called the Post of Saturday, said to have been received by a Task. To which will be added another, which I finished yesterday, called, I believe, Tirocinium, on 'he subject of education. general officer, and by him sent to the press, as worthy of public notice, and which has all the appearance of authenticity, would alone justify the severest censure of those bodies, if any such justification were wanted. By way of supplement to what I have written on this subject, I have added On the 21st of this month the writer commenced his a poem, called Tirocinium, which is in rhyme. It treats of the scandalous relaxation of that disci You perceive that I have taken your advice, and given the pen no rest.* anslation of Homer. W. C. pline that obtains in almost all schools universally, | sion following. In my last I recommended it to out especially in the largest, which are so negli- you to procure franks for the conveyance of Tirogent in the article of morals, that boys are de- cinium, dated on a day therein mentioned, and the bauched in general the moment they are capable earliest which at that time I could venture to apof being so. It recommends the office of tutor to point. It has happened however that the poem is the father, where there is no real impediment; the finished a month sooner than I expected, and twoexpedient of a domestic tutor, where there is; and thirds of it are at this time fairly transcribed; an the disposal of boys into the hands of a respectable accident to which the riders of a Parnassian steed country clergyman, who limits his attention to two, are liable, who never know, before they mount in all cases where they can not be conveniently him, at what rate he will choose to travel. If he educated at home. Mr. Unwin happily affording be indisposed to despatch, it is impossible to acceme an instance in point, the poem is inscribed to lerate his pace; if otherwise, equally impossible to him. You will now I hope command your hun- stop him. Therefore my errand to you at this ger to be patient, and be satisfied with the luncheon time is to cancel the former assignation, and to that I send, till dinner comes. That piecemeal inform you that by whatever means you please, perusal of the work, sheet by sheet, would be so and as soon as you please, the piece in question disadvantageous to the work itself, and therefore will be ready to attend you; for without exerting so uncomfortable to me, that (I dare say) you will any extraordinary diligence, I shall have completed wave your desire of it. A poem, thus disjointed, the transcript in a week. can not possibly be fit for any body's inspection but the author's. The critics will never know that four lines of it were composed while I had a dose of ipecacuanha Tully's rule-Nulla dies sine lineâ'-will make on my stomach; in short, that I was delivered of a volume in less time than one would suppose. I the emetic and the verses in the same moment. adhered to it so rigidly, that though more than once Knew they this, they would at least allow me to I found three lines as many as I had time to com- be a poet of singular industry, and confess that I pass, still I wrote; and finding occasionally, and lose no time. I have heard of poets who have as it might happen, a more fluent vein, the abun- found cathartics of sovereign use, when they had dance of one day made me amends for the barren- occasion to be particularly brilliant. Dryden alness of the other. But I do not mean to write ways used them, and in commemoration of it, blank verse again. Not having the music of rhyme, Bayes in the Rehearsal is made to inform the auit requires so close an attention to the pause, and dience that in a poetical emergency he always had the cadence, and such a peculiar mode of expres- recourse to stewed prunes. But I am the only sion, as to render it, to me at least, the most diffi- poet who has dared to reverse the prescription, and cult species of poetry that I have ever meddled with. whose enterprise, having succeeded to admiration, I am obliged to you, and to Mr. Bacon, for your warrants him to recommend an emetic to all future kind remembrance of me when you meet. No ar- bards, as the most infallible means of producing a tist can excel as he does, without the finest feelings; fluent and easy versification. and every man that has the finest feelings is, and must be, amiable. Adieu, my dear friend! Affectionately yours, W. C. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. My love to all your family. Adieu, W. C. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. MY DEAR FRIEND, Nov. 29, 1784. MY DEAR WILLIAM, 1784. I AM happy that you are pleased, and accept it THE slice which (you observe) has been taken as an earnest that I shall not at least disgust the from the top of the sheet, it lost before I began to public. For though I know your partiality to me, write: but being a part of the paper which is sel- I know at the same time with what laudable tendom used, I thought it would be pity to discard or derness you feel for your own reputation, and that to degrade to meaner purposes, the fair and ample for the sake of that most delicate part of your proremnant, on account of so immaterial a defect. I perty, though you would not criticise me with an therefore have destined it to be the vehicle of a let- unfriendly and undue severity, you would however ter, which you will accept as entire, though a law- beware of being satisfied too hastily, and with no yer perhaps would, without much difficulty, prove warrantable cause of being so. I called you the it to be but a fragment. The best recompense I tutor of your two sons, in contemplation of the can make you for writing without a frank is, to certainty of that event-it is a fact in suspense, propose it to you to take your revenge by return- not in fiction. ing an answer under the same predicament; and My principal errand to you now is to give you the best reason I can give for doing it is the occa-information on the following subiect: The moment |