TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. Olney, May 26, 1779. are sure to acquire by falling of their own accord. member upon this occasion) that Sam Cox, I remember (the last thing I mean to rethe counsel, walking by the sea-side, as if absorbed in deep contemplation, was questioned about what he was musing on. Our love attends your whole party. W. C. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.* He I am obliged to you for the Poets, and, though I little thought that I was translating so much money out of your pocket into the bookseller's, when I turned Prior's poem into Latin, yet I must needs say that, if you think it worth while to purchase the English Clas-replied, "I was wondering that such an almost infinite and unwieldly element should sics at all, you cannot possess yourself of them upon better terms. I have looked into produce a sprat." some of the volumes, but, not having yet finished the Register, have merely looked into them. A few things I have met with, which, if they had been burned the moment they were written, it would have been better for the author, and at least as well for his readers. There is not much of this, but a little is too much. I think it a pity the editor admitted any; the English muse would have lost no credit by the omission of such trash. Some of them, again, seem to me to have but a very disputable right to a place among the Classics, and I am quite at a loss, when I see them in such company, to conjecture what is Dr. Johnson's idea or definition of classical merit. But, if he inserts the Poems of some who can hardly be said to deserve such an honor, the purchaser may comfort himself with the hope that he will exclude none that do. W. C. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.* Olney, July, -79. My dear Friend,-When I was at Margate, it was an excursion of pleasure to go to see Ramsgate. The pier, I remember, was accounted a most excellent piece of stonework, and such I found it. By this time, I suppose, it is finished, and surely it is no small advantage that you have an opportunity of observing how nicely those great stones are put together, as often as you please, without either trouble or expense. There was not at that time, much to be seen in the Isle of Thanet, besides the beauty of the country and the fine prospects of the sea, which are nowhere surpassed, except in the Isle of Wight, or upon some parts of the coast of Hampshire. One sight, however, I remember, engaged my curiosity, and I went to see it a fine piece of ruins, built by the late Lord Holland at a great expense, which, the day after I saw it, tumbled down for nothing. Perhaps, therefore, it is still a ruin; and, if it is, I would advise you by all means to visit it, as it must have been much improved by this fortunate incident. It is hardly possible to put stones together with that air of wild and magnificent disorder which they * Private correspondence. Olney, July 17, 1779. My dear Friend,-we envy you your seabreezes. In the garden we feel nothing but the reflection of the heat from the walls, and in the parlor, from the opposite houses. I fancy Virgil was so situated when he wrote those two beautiful lines: Oh quis me gelidis in vallibus Hæmi Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbrâ! The worst of it is that, though the sunbeams strike as forcibly upon my harp-strings sounds, but rather produce such groans as as they did upon his, they elicit no such they are said to have drawn from those of the statue of Memnon. As you have ventured to make the experiment, your own experience will be your best guide in the article of bathing. An infepull at it with all one's might, from Smolrence will hardly follow, though one should lett's case to yours. He was corpulent, either stolen or strayed, such a description muscular, and strong; whereas, if you were of you in an advertisement would hardly direct an inquirer with sufficient accuracy and exactness. make your head ache, or prevent you sleepBut, if bathing does not ing at night, I should imagine it could not hurt you. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. Olney, Sept. 21, 1779. Amico mio, be pleased to buy me a glazier's diamond pencil. I have glazed the two frames, designed to receive my pine plants. But I cannot mend the kitchen win. dows, till, by the help of that implement, I can reduce the glass to its proper dimensions. If I were a plumber, I should be a complete glazier, and possibly the happy time may come, when I shall be seen trudg ing away to the neighboring towns with a shelf of glass hanging at my back. If gov ernment should impose another tax upon * Private correspondence. of that name, which, if you purchased, I should be glad to borrow. I have seen only an extract from it in the Review, which made me laugh heartily and wish to peruse the whole. that commodity, I hardly know a business in which a gentleman might more successfully employ himself. A Chinese, of ten times my fortune, would avail himself of such an opportunity without scruple; and why should not I, who want money as much The newspaper informs me of the arrival as any mandarin in China? Rousseau would of the Jamaica fleet. I hope it imports some have been charmed to have seen me so occu- pine-apple plants for me. I have a good pied, and would have exclaimed with rapture frame, and a good bed prepared to receive that he had found the Emilius who, he sup- them. I send you annexed a fable, in which posed, had subsisted only in his own idea." the pine-apple makes a figure, and shall be I would recommend it to you to follow my glad if you like the taste of it. Two pair of example. You will presently qualify your-soles, with shrimps, which arrived last night, self for the task, and may not only amuse demand my acknowledgments. You have yourself at home, but may even exercise heard that when Arion performed upon the your skill in mending the church windows; harp the fish followed him. I really have no which, as it would save money to the parish, design to fiddle you out of more fish; but, would conduce, together with your other if you should esteem my verses worthy of ministerial accomplishments, to make you such a price, though I shall never be so reextremely popular in the place. nowned as he was, I shall think myself equally indebted to the Muse that helps me. I have eight pair of tame pigeons. When I first enter the garden in the morning, I find them perched upon the wall, waiting for their breakfast, for I feed them always upon the gravel walk. If your wish should be accomplished, and you should find yourself furnished with the wings of a dove, I shall undoubtedly find you amongst them. Only be so good, if that should be the case, to announce yourself by some means or other. For I imagine your crop will require something better than tares to fill it. Your mother and I, last week, made a trip in a post-chaise to Gayhurst, the seat of Mr. Wright, about four miles off. He understood that I did not much affect strange faces, and sent over his servant, on purpose to inform me that he was going into Leicestershire, and that if I chose to see the gardens I might gratify myself without danger of seeing the proprietor. I accepted the invitation, and was delighted with all I found there. The situation is happy, the gardens elegantly disposed, the hot-house in the most flourishing state, and the orange-trees the most captivating creatures of the kind I ever 81W. A man, in short, had need have the talents of Cox or Langford, the auctioneers, to do the whole scene justice. Our love attends you all. Yours, TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.* W. C. Olney, Oct. 2, 1779. My dear Friend,-You begin to count the remaining days of the vacation, not with impatience, but through unwillingness to see the end of it. For the mind of man, at least of most men, is equally busy in anticipating the evil and the good. That word anticipation puts me in remembrance of the pamphlet • Private correspondence. My dear Friend,-I wrote my last letter merely to inform you that I had nothing to say, in answer to which you have said nothing. I admire the propriety of your conduct, though I am a loser by it. I will endeavor to say something now, and shall hope for something in return. I have been well entertained with Johnson's biography, for which I thank you: with one exception, and that a swingeing one, I think he has not acquitted himself with his usual good sense and sufficiency. His treatment of Milton is unmerciful to the last de gree. He has belabored that great poet's character with the most industrious cruelty. As a man, he has hardly left him the shadow of one good quality. Churlishness in his private life, and a rancorous hatred of everything royal in his public, are the two colors with which he has smeared all the canvas. If he had any virtues, they are not to be found in the Doctor's picture of him; and it is well for Milton that some sourness in his temper is the only vice with which his memory has been charged; it is evident enough that, if his biographer could have discovered more, he would not have spared him. As a * Vide Cowper's Poems. poet, he has treated him with severity enough, and has plucked one or two of the most beautiful feathers out of his Muse's wing, and trampled them under his great foot. He has passed sentence of condemnation upon Lycidas, and has taken occasion, from that charming poem, to expose to ridicule (what is indeed ridiculous enough) the childish prattlement of pastoral compositions, as if Lycidas was the prototype and pattern of them all. The liveliness of the description, the sweetness of the numbers, the classical spirit of antiquity that prevails in it, go for nothing. I am convinced, by the way, that he has no ear for poetical numbers, or that it was stopped, by prejudice, against the harmony of Milton's. Was there ever anything so delightful as the music of the Paradise Lost? It is like that of a fine organ; has the fullest and deepest tones of majesty, with all the softness and elegance of the Dorian flute, variety without end, and never equalled, unless, perhaps, by Virgil. Yet the Doctor has little or nothing to say upon this copious theme, but talks something about the unfitness of the English language for blank verse, and how apt it is, in the mouth of some readers, to degenerate into declamation. I could talk a good while longer, but I have no room. Our loves attends you. Yours affectionately, TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.* W. C. You have written since I received it, I have never answered. When that epistle passed under your pen, you were miserable about your tithes, and your imagination was hung round with pictures, that terrified you to such a degree as made even the receipt of money burthensome. But it is all over now. sent away your farmers in good humor, (for you can make people merry whenever you please,) and now you have nothing to do but to chink your purse and laugh at what is past. Your delicacy makes you groan under that which other men never feel, or feel but lightly. A fly that settles upon the tip of the nose is troublesome; and this is a comparison adequate to the most that mankind in general are sensible of upon such tiny occasions. But the flies that pester you always get between your eye-lids, where the annoyance is almost insupportable. I would follow your advice, and endeavor to furnish Lord North with a scheme of supplies for the ensuing year, if the difficulty I find in answering the call of my own emergencies did not make me despair of satisfying those of the nation. I can say but this: if I had ten acres of land in the world, whereas I have not one, and in those ten acres should discover a gold mine, richer than all Mexico and Peru, when I had reserved a few ounces for my own annual supply I would willingly give the rest to government. My ambition would be more gratified by annihilating the national incumbrances than by going daily down to the bottom of a mine, to wallow in my own emolument. This is patriotism-you will allow; but, alas! this virtue is for the most part in the hands of those who can do no good with it! He that has but a single handful of it catches so greedily at the first opportunity of growing rich, that his patriotism drops to the ground, and he grasps the gold instead of it. He that never meets with such an opportunity holds it fast in his clenched fists, and says "Oh, how much good I would do if I could!" Your mother says "Pray send my dear love." There is hardly room to add mine, but you will suppose it. Yours, W. C. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. Olney, Dec. 2, 1779. My dear Friend,-How quick is the succession of human events! The cares of today are seldom the cares of to-morrow; and when we lie down at night, we may safely say to most of our troubles-" Ye have done your worst, and we shall meet no more." This observation was suggested to me by reading your last letter, which, though I * Private correspondence. † Vide Cowper's Poems. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. Olney, Feb. 27, 1780. My dear Friend,-As you are pleased to desire my letters, I am the more pleased with writing them; though at the same time, I must needs testify my surprise that you should think them worth receiving, as I seldom send one that I think favorably of my self. This is not to be understood as an imputation upon your taste or judgment, but as an encomium upon my own modesty and humility, which I desire you to remark well. It is a just observation of Sir Joshua Reynolds, that, though men of ordinary talents may be highly satisfied with their own productions, men of true genius never are. Whatever be their subject, they always seem to themselves to fall short of it, even when they seem to others most to excel; and for this reason-because they have a certain sublime sense of perfection, which other men are strangers to, and which they themselves in their performances are not able to exemplify. Your servant, Sir Joshua! I litthe thought of seeing you when I began, but as you have popped in you are welcome. When I wrote last, I was a little inclined to send you a copy of verses, entitled the Modern Patriot, but was not quite pleased with a line or two, which I found it difficult to mend, therefore did not. At night I read Mr. Burke's speech in the newspaper, and was so well pleased with his proposals for a reformation, and the temper in which he made them, that I began to think better of his cause, and burnt my verses. Such is the lot of the man who writes upon the subject of the day; the aspect of affairs changes in an hour or two, and his opinion with it; what was just and well-deserved satire in the morning, in the evening becomes a libel; the author commences his own judge, and, while he condemns with unrelenting severity what he so lately approved, is sorry to find that he has laid his leaf gold upon touchwood, which crumbled away under his fingers. Alas! what can I do with my wit? I have not enough to do great things with, and these little things are so fugitive, that, while a man ratches at the subject, he is only filling his hand with smoke. I must do with it as I do with my linnet: I keep him for the most part in a cage, but now and then set open the door, that he may whisk about the room a little, and then shut him up again. My whisking wit has produced the following, the subject of which is more important than the manner in which I have treated it seems to imply, but a fable may speak truth, and all truth is sterling; I only premise that, in the philosophical tract in the Register, I found it asserted that the glow-worm is the nightingale's food.* An officer of a regiment, part of which is quartered here, gave one of the soldiers leave to be drunk six weeks in hopes of curing him by satiety; he was drunk six weeks, and is so still, as often as he can find an opportunity. One rice may swallow up another, but no coroner, in the state of Ethics, ever brought in his verdict, when a vice died, that it wasfelo de se. • This letter contained the beautiful fable of the Nightgale and the Glow-worm. Thanks for all you have done, and all you intend; the biography will be particularly welcome. Yours, W. C. TO MRS. NEWTON.* Olney, March 4, 1780. Dear Madam,-To communicate surprise is almost, perhaps quite, as agreeable as to receive it. This is my present motive for writing to you rather than to Mr. Newton. He would be pleased with hearing from me, but he would not be surprised at it; you see, therefore, I am selfish upon the present occa sion, and principally consult my own gratification. Indeed, if I consulted yours, I should be silent, for I have no such budget as the minister's, furnished and stuffed with ways and means for every emergency, and shall find it difficult, perhaps, to raise supplies even for a short epistle. You have observed, in common conversation, that the man who coughs the oftenest (I mean if he has not a cold), does it because he has nothing to say. Even so it is in letter-writing: a long preface, such as mine, is an ugly symptom, and always forebodes great sterility in the following pages. The vicarage-house became a melancholy object as soon as Mr. Newton had left it; when you left it, it became more melancholy: now it is actually occupied by another family, even I cannot look at it without being shocked. As I walked in the garden this evening, I saw the smoke issue from the study chimney, and said to myself, That used to be a sign that Mr. Newton was there; but it is so no longer. The walls of the house know nothing of the change that has taken place; the bolt of the chamber-door sounds just as it used to do; and when Mr. Pgoes up stairs, for aught I know, or ever shall know, the fall of his foot could hardly, perhaps, be distinguished from that of Mr. Newton. But Mr. Newton's foot will never be heard upon that staircase again. These reflections, and such as these, occurred to me upon the occasion. . . . If I were in a condition to leave Olney too, I certainly would not stay in it. It is no attachment to the place that binds me here, but an unfitness for every other. I lived in it once, but now I am buried in it, and have no business with the world on the outside of my sepulchre; my appearance would startle them, and theirs would be shocking to me. Such are my thoughts about the matter. Others are more deeply affected, and by more weighty considerations, having been many years the objects of a ministry which they had reason to account themselves happy in the possession of. . . . • Private correspondence. TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.* W. C. I am obliged to you for the communica tion of your correspondence with. It was impossible for any man, of any temper Olney, March 16, 1780. whatever, and however wedded to his own My dear Friend,-If I had had the horns purpose, to resent so gentle and friendly an of a snail, I should have drawn them in the exhortation as you sent him. Men of lively moment I saw the reason of your epistolary imaginations are not often remarkable for brevity, because I felt it too. May your seven solidity of judgment. They have generally reams be multiplied into fourteen, till your strong passions to bias it, and are led far letters become truly Lacedæmonian, and are away from their proper road, in pursuit of reduced to a single syllable. Though I shall petty phantoms of their own creating. No be a sufferer by the effect, I shall rejoice in law ever did or can effect what he has asthe cause. You are naturally formed for cribed to that of Moses: it is reserved for business, and such a head as yours can never mercy to subdue the corrupt inclinations of have too much of it. Though my predictions mankind, which threatenings and penalties, have been fulfilled in two instances, I do not through the depravity of the heart, have al plume myself much upon my sagacity; be-ways had a tendency rather to inflame. cause it required but little to foresee that Thurlow would be Chancellor, and that you would have a crowded office. As to the rest of my connexions, there too I have given proof of equal foresight, with not a jot more reason for vanity. To use the phrase of all who ever wrote upon the state of Europe, the political horizon is dark indeed. The cloud has been thickening, and the thunder advancing many years. The storm now seems to be vertical, and threatens to burst upon the land, as if with the next clap it would shake all to pieces. As for me, I am no Quaker, except where military matters are in question, and there I am much of the same mind with an honest man, who, when he was forced into the service, declared he would not fight, and gave this reason-because he saw nothing worth fighting for. You will say, perhaps, is not liberty worth a struggle? True: but will success ensure it to me? Might I not, like the Americans, emancipate myself from one master only to serve a score, and with laurels upon my brow sigh for my former chains again? Many thanks for your kind invitation. Ditto to Mrs. Hill, for the seeds-unexpected, and therefore the more welcome. * Private correspondence. The love of power seems as natural to kings as the desire of liberty is to their subjects; the excess of either is vicious and tends to the ruin of both. There are many, I believe, who wish the present corrupt state of things disolved, in hope that the pure primitive constitution will spring up from the ruins. But it is not for man, by himself man, to bring order out of confusion: the progress from one to the other is not natural, much less necessary, and, without the intervention of divine aid, impossible; and they who are for making the hazardous experi ment would certainly find themselves disappointed. Affectionately yours, W. C. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. Olney, March 28, 1780. My dear Friend, I have heard nothing more from Mr. Newton, upon the subject you mention; but I dare say, that, having been given to expect the benefit of your nomination in behalf of his nephew, he still depends upon it. His obligations to Mr. - have been so numerous and so weighty, that though he has in a few instances prevailed upon himself to recommend an object now and then to his patronage, he has very spar *Ashley Cowper, Esq. |