genius The portrait is drawn by his own hand. We cannot withhold our praise from the ingenuousness with which he discloses the secret recesses of his heart, and the fidelity with which conscience exercises its inquisitorial power over the life and actions. We are also affected by the deep humility, the confession of sin, and the earnest appeal for mercy, discernible in many of the prayers and meditations. But viewed as a whole, this Diary creates painful feelings, and affords occasion for much reflection. If therefore we indulge in a few remarks, founded on some of the extracts, it is not to detract from the high fame of so distinguished a scholar, whom we consider to have enlarged the bounds of British literature, and to have acquired a lasting title to public gratitude and esteem, but to perform a solemn and conscientious duty.* We are now arrived at a period when it is high time to establish certain great and momentous truths in the public mind; and, among those that are of primary importance, to prove that conversion is not a term, but a principle; not the designation of a party but the enjoined precept of a Saviour; the evidence of our claim to the title of Christian, and indispensable to constitute our meetness for the enjoyment of heaven. We now extract the following passages from the Diary of Dr. Johnson, with the intention of adding a few comments. Easter-day, 1765.-" Since the last Easter, I have reformed no evil habit; my time has been unprofitably spent, and seems as a dream, that has left nothing behind. My memory grows confused, and I know not how the days pass over me." "I purpose to rise at eight, because, though I shall not yet rise early, it will be much earlier than I now rise, for I often lie till two; and will gain me much time, and tend to a conquest over idleness, and give time for other duties." Sept. 18, 1768.-"I have now begun the sixtieth year of my life. How the last year has past I am unwilling to terrify myself with thinking." Jan. 1, 1769.—“I am now about to begin another year: how the last has passed it would be, in my state of weakness, perhaps not prudent too solicitously to recol iect." 1772. "I resolved last Easter to read, within the year, the whole Bible, a very great part of which I had never looked upon. I read the Greek Testament without constru *If there is a regard due to the memory of the dead, there is yet more respect to be paid to knowledge, to vir tue, and to truth." It is the business of a biographer to pass lightly over those performances and actions which produce vulgar greatness; to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, where exterior appearances are laid aside."-Rambler, No. 60, Jol ü. ing, and this day concluded the Apocalypse. I think that no part was missed." "My purpose of reading the rest of the Bible was forgotten, till I took by chance the resolutions of last Easter in my hand." "I hope to read the whole Bible once a year, as long as I live." April 26." It is a comfort to me, that at last, in my sixty-third year, I have attained to know, even thus hastily, confusedly, and imperfectly, what my Bible contains." 1775.-" Yesterday, I do not recollect that to go to church came into my thoughts; but I sat in my chamber preparing for preparation: interrupted I know not how. I was near two hours at dinner." 1777. "I have this year omitted church on most Sundays, intending to supply the deficiency in the week. So that I owe twelve attendances on worship." "When I look back upon resolutions of improvement and amendment which have, year after year, been made and broken, either by negligence, forgetfulness, vicious idleness, casual interruption, or morbid infirmity; when I find that so much of my life has stolen unprofitably away, and that I can descry, by retrospection, scarcely a few single days properly and vigorously employed, why do I yet try to resolve again? I try, because reformation is necessary, and despair criminal; I try in humble hope of the help of God."* Our sole object, in the introduction of these extracts, is to found upon them an appeal to those who question the necessity of conversion, in that higher sense and acceptation which implies an inward principle of grace, changing and transforming the heart. We would beg to ask whether it was not the want of the vital power and energy of this principle, that produced in Johnson the vacillation of mind and purpose, which we have just recorded; the hours lost; the resolutions broken; the Sabbaths violated; and the sacred volume not read, till the shades of evening advanced upon him? What instance can be adduced that more clearly demonstrates the insufficiency of the highest acquirements of human learning, and that nothing but a Divine power can illuminate the mind, and convert the heart? Happily, Johnson is known to have at length found what he needed, and to have died with a full hope of immortality.† But we would go further. We maintain that all men, without respect of character or person, need conversion; for "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;" all par take of the corruption and infirmities of a fallen nature, and inherit the primeval curse Shall reason, shall philosophy effect the cure Reason sees what is right; erring nature, in despite of reason, follows what is wrong † See p. 191. * See Diary of Dr. Johnson. Philosophy can penetrate into the abstrusest Having quoted Sir William Jones's testi mysteries, ascertain by what laws the uni-mony, we conclude by urging his example. verse is governed, and trace the heavenly bodies in their courses, but cannot eradicate one evil passion from the soul. Where then lies the remedy? The Gospel reveals it. And what is the Gospel? The Gospel is a dispensation of grace and mercy, for the recovery of fallen man, and the application of this remedy to the heart and conscience effects that conversion of which we are speaking. But by whom or by what applied? By Him who holds "the keys of heaven and of hell," who "openeth, and no man shutteth," and whose prerogative it is to say, "Behold, I make all things new." And how? By his word, and by his Spirit. "He sent his word and healed them."+"Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever." The word is the appointed instrument, the Spirit, the mighty agent which gives the quickening power: not by any supernatural revelation, but in the ordinary operations of divine grace, and consistently with the freedom and co-operation of man as a moral agent; speaking pardon and peace to the conscience, and delivering from the tyranny of sense and the slavery of fear, by proclaiming "liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound." The last subject for reflection suggested by the Diary of Dr. Johnson, is the frequent neglect of the Sabbath, and his confession that he had lived a stranger to the greater part of the contents of his Bible till the sixty-third year of his age. This is an afflicting record, and we notice the fact, from a deep conviction that piety can never retain its power and ascendancy in the heart, where the Bible is not read, and the ordinances of God are frequently neglected. When will genius learn that its noblest attribute is to light its fires at the lamp of divine truth, and that the union of piety and learning is the highest perfection of our nature? We beg to commend to the earnest attention of the student the following eloquent testimony to the sacred volume from the pen of Sir William Jones. "I have carefully and regularly perused these Holy Scriptures, and am of opinion that the Volume, independently of its divine origin, contains more sublimity, purer morality, more important history, and finer strains of eloquence, than can be collected from all other books, in whatever language they may have been written."|| Rev. xxi. 5. † Psalm cvii. 20. 1 Pet. i. 23. See also Heb. iv. 12. "It is the spirit that quickeneth." John vi. 63. The union of the Word and the Spirit in imparting spiritual life to the soul is forcibly expressed in the same verse: The words tha. I speak unto you, they are spirit and hey are life." See Lord Teignmouth's Life of Sir William Jones. "Before thy mystic altar, Heavenly Truth, TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. Olney, August 27, 1785. My dear Friend,-I was low in spirits yesterday, when your parcel came and raised them. Every proof of attention and regard to a man who lives in a vinegar-bottle is welcome from his friends on the outside of it; accordingly your books were welcome (you must not forget, by the way, that I want the original, of which you have sent me the translation only), and the ruffles from Miss Shuttleworth most welcome. I am covetous, if ever man was, of living in the remembrance of absentees, whom I highly value and esteem, and consequently felt myself much gratified by her very obliging present. I have had more comfort, far more comfort, in the connexions that I have formed within the last twenty years, than in the more numerous ones that I had before. Memorandum.-The latter are almost all Unwins or Unwinisms. You are entitled to my thanks also for the facetious engravings of John Gilpin. A serious poem is like a swan: it flies heavily, and never far; but a jest has the wings of a swallow that never tire, and that carry it into every nook and corner. I am perfectly a stranger, however, to the reception that my volume meets with, and, I believe, in respect of my nonchalance upon that subject, if authors would but copy so fair an example, ar a most exemplary character. I must tell you nevertheless that, although the laurels that I gain at Olney will never minister much to my pride, I have acquired some. The Rev. Mr. Scott is my admirer, and thinks my second volume superior to my first. It ought to be If we do not improve by practice, then nothing can mend us; and a man has no more cause to be mortified at being told that he has excelled himself, than the elephant had, whose praise it was that he was the greatest elephant in the world, himself excepted. So. If it be fair to judge of a book by an extract, I do not wonder that you were so little edified by Johnson's Journal. It is even more ridiculous than was poor's, of flatulent memory. The portion of it given to us in this day's paper contains not one sentiment Worth one farthing except the last, in which he resolves to bind himself with no more un * Ibid. bidden obligations. Poor man! one would think that to pray for his dead wife, and to pinch himself with church-fasts had been almost the whole of his religion. I am sorry that he who was so manly an advocate for the cause of virtue in all other places was so childishly employed, and so superstitiously, too, in his closet. Had he studied his Bible more, to which, by his own confession, he was in great part a stranger, he had known better what use to make of his retired hours, and had trifled less. His lucubrations of this sort have rather the appearance of religious dotage than of any vigorous exertions towards God. It will be well if the publication prove not hurtful in its effects, by exposing the best cause, already too much despised, to ridicule still more profane. On the other side of the same paper, I find a long string of aphorisms, and maxims, and rules for the conduct of life, which, though they appear not with his name, are so much in his manner, with the above-mentioned, that I suspect them for his. I have not read them all, but several of them I read that were trivial enough for the sake of one, however, I forgive him the rest-he advises never to banish hope entirely, because it is the cordial of life, although it be the greatest flatterer in the world. Such a measure of hope as may not endanger my peace by a disappointment I would wish to cherish upon every subject in which I am interested: but there lies the difficulty. A cure, however, and the only one, for all the irregularities of hope and fear, is found in submission to the will of God. Happy they that have it. I This last sentence puts me in mind of your reference to Blair in a former letter, whom you there permitted to be your arbiter to adjust the respective claims of who or that. do not rashly differ from so great a grammarian, nor do, at any rate, differ from him altogether-upon solemn occasions, as in prayer or preaching, for instance, I would be strictly correct, and upon stately ones; for instance, were I writing an epic poem, I would be so likewise, but not upon familiar occasions. God, who heareth prayer, is right: Hector, who saw Patroclus, is right: and the man, that dresses me every day, is in my mind, right also because the contrary would give an air of stiffness and pedantry to an expression that, in respect of the matter of it, cannot be too negligently made up. Adieu, my dear William! I have scribbled with all my might, which, breakfast-time extepted, has been my employment ever since rose, and it is now past one. W. C. Yours, TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.* My dear Friend,-I am sorry that an ex cursion, which you would otherwise have found so agreeable, was attended with so great a drawback upon its pleasures as Miss Cunningham's illness must needs have been. Had she been able to bathe in the sea, it might have been of service to her, but I knew her weakness and delicacy of habit to be such as did not encourage any very sanguine hopes that the regimen would suit her. I remem ber Southampton well, having spent much time there; but, though I was young, and had no objections, on the score of conscience, either to dancing or cards, I never was in the assembly-room in my life. I never was fond of company, and especially disliked it in the country. A walk to Netley Abbey, or to Freemantle, or to Redbridge, or a book by the fire-side, had always more charms for me than any other amusement that the place afforded. I was also a sailor, and, being of Sir Thomas Hesketh's party, who was himself born one, was often pressed into the service. But, though I gave myself an air and wore trowsers, I had no genuine right to that honor, disliking much to be occupied in great waters, unless in the finest weather. How they continue to elude the wearisomeness that attends a sea life, who take long voyages, you know better than I; but, for my own part, I seldom have sailed so far as from Hampton river to Portsmouth without feeling the confinement irksome, and sometimes to a degree that was almost insupportable. There is a certain perverseness, of which I believe all men have a share, but of which no man has a larger share than 1-1 mean that temper, or humor, or whatever it is to be called, that indisposes us to a situation, though not unpleasant in itself, merely because we cannot get out of it. I could not endure the room in which I now write, were I conscious that the door were locked. In less than five minutes I should feel myself a prisoner, though I can spend hours in it under an assurance that I may leave it when I please without experiencing any tedium at all. It was for this reason, I suppose, that the yacht was always disagreeable to me. Could I have stepped out of it into a cornfield or a garden, I should have liked it well enough, but, being surrounded with water, I was as much confined in it as if I had been surrounded by fire, and did not find that it made me any adequate compensation for such an abridgment of my liberty. I make little doubt but Noah was glad when he was enlarged from the ark; and we are sure that Jonah was, when he came out of the fish; and so was I to escape from the good sloop the Harriet. * Private correspondence. In my last, I wrote you word that Mr. Perry was given over by his friends, and pronounced a dead man by his physician. Just when I had reached the end of the foregoing paragraph, he came in. His errand hither was to bring two letters, which I enclose; one is to yourself, in which he will give you, I doubt not, such an account, both of his body and mind, as will make all that I might say upon those subjects superfluous. The only consequences of his illness seem to be that ne looks a little pale, and that, though always a most excellent man, he is still more angelic than he was. Illness sanctified is better than health. But I know 2 man who has been a sufferer by a worse illness than his, almost these fourteen years, and who, at present, is only the worse for it. Mr. Scott called upon us yesterday; he is much inclined to set up a Sunday School, if he can raise a fund for the purpose. Mr. Jones has had one some time at Clifton, and Mr. Unwin writes me word, that he has been thinking of nothing else day and night, for a fortnight. It is a wholesome measure, that seems to bid fair to be pretty generally adopted, and, for the good effects that it promises deserves well to be so. I know not, indeed, while the spread of the gospel continues so limited as it is, how a reformation of manners in the lower class of mankind can be brought to pass; or by what other means the utter abolition of all principle among them, moral as well as religious, can possibly be prevented. Heathenish parents can only bring up heathenish children; an assertion nowhere oftener or more clearly illustrated than at Olney; where children, seven years of age, infest the streets every evening with curses and with songs, to which it would be unseemly to give their proper epithet. Such urchins as these could not be so diabolically accomplished, unless by the connivance of their parents. It is well indeed if, in some instances, their parents be not themselves their instructors. Judging by their proficiency, one can hardly suppose any other. It is therefore, doubtless, an act of the greatest charity, to snatch them out of such hands before the inveteracy of the evil shall have made it desperate. Mr. Teedon, I should imagine, will be employed as a teacher, should this expedicnt be carried into effect. I know not at least that we have any other person among us so well qualified for the service. He is indisputably a Christian man, and miserably poor, whose revenues need improvement, as much as any children in the world tan possibly need instruction. Believe me, my dear friend, in England, which commenced about this time, is too important an era to be passed over in silence. The founder of this system. so beneficial in its consequences to the rising generation, was Robert Raikes, Esq., of Gloucester, and from whose lips the writer once received the history of their first insti tution. He had observed in going to divine worship on the Sabbath, that the streets were generally filled with groups of idle and ragged children, playing and blaspheming in a manner that showed their utter unconsciousness of the sacred obligations of that day. The thought suggested itself, that, if these children could be collected together, and the time so misapplied be devoted to instruction and attendance at the house of God, a happy change might be effected in their life and conduct. He consulted the clergyman of the parish, who encouraged the attempt. A respectable and pious female was immediately selected, and twelve children, who were shortly afterwards decently clothed, were placed under her care. Rules and regulations were formed, and the school opened and closed with prayer. The ignorant were taught to read, the word of God was introduced, and the children walked in orderly procession to church. The visible improvement in their moral habits, and their proficiency in learning, led to an extension of the plan. The principal inhabitants of the town became interested in its success, and in a short time the former noisy inmates of the streets were found uniting in the accents of prayer and praise in the temple of Jehovah. The example manifested by the city of Gloucester soon attracted public attention. The queen of George the Third requested to be furnished with the history and particulars of the undertaking, and was so impressed with its importance as to distinguish it by her sanction. The result is well known. Sunday schools are now universally established, and have been adopted in Europe, in America, and wherever the traces of civilization are to be discerned. Their sound has gone forth into all lands, and, so long as knowledge is necessary to piety, and both constitute the grace and ornament of the young and the safeguard of society, the venerable name of Raikes will be enrolled with gratitude among the friends and benefactors of mankind.* *The editor, once conversing with the late Rev. An connexion with that noble institution, the British and drew Fuller, the well-known secretary of the Serampore Missionary Society, on the subject of Sunday schools in Foreign Bible Society, the latter observed, "Yes; if the Bible Society had commenced its operations earlier, its usefulness would have been comparatively limited. be cause the faculty of reading would not have been so generally acquired. Each institution is in the order of Providence:-God first raised up Sunday schools, and children were thereby taught to read; afterwards, when this faculty was obtained, in order that it might not be perverted to wrong ends, God raised up the Bible Society, that the best of all possible books might be put The first establishment of Sunday schools into their hands. Yes, sir," he added in his emphatic W. C. With true affection, yours, TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.* Olney, Oct. 11, 1785. My dear Sir,-You began your letter with an apology for long silence, and it is now incumbent upon me to do the same: and the rather, as your kind invitation to Wargrave entitled you to a speedier answer. The truth is that I am become, if not a man of business, yet a busy man, and have been engaged almost this twelvemonth in a work that will allow of no long interruption. On this account it was impossible for me to accept your obliging summons; and, having only to tell you that I could not, it appeared affectionate heart of Cowper. The person to me as a matter of no great moment whe-ulated by the publication of his recent works ther you received that intelligence soon or she wrote to him, on that occasion, a very late. affectionate letter. You do me justice when you ascribe my printed epistle to you to my friendship for you; though, in fact, it was equally owing to the opinion that I have of yours for me.t Having, in one part or other of my two volumes, distinguished by name the majority of those few for whom I entertain a friendship, it seemed to me that it would be unjustifiable negligence to omit yourself; and, if I took that step without communicating to you my intention, it was only to gratify myself the more with the hope of surprising you agreeably. Poets are dangerous persons to be acquainted with, especially if a man have that in his character that promises to shine in verse. To that very circumstance it is owing that you are now figuring away in mine. For, notwithstanding what you say on the subject of honesty and friendship, that they are not splendid enough for pub-gave me this morning. lic celebration, I must still think of them as I did before, that there are no qualities of the mind and heart that can deserve it better. I can, at least for my own part, look round about upon the generality, and, while I see them deficient in those grand requisites of a respectable character, am not able to discover that they possess any other of value enough to atone for the want of them. I beg that you will present my respects to Mrs. Hill, and believe me Ever affectionately yours, W. C. The period at which we are now arrived was marked by the renewal of an intimacy, long suspended indeed, but which neither time nor circumstances could efface from the shall now introduce to the notice of the It gave rise to many from him, which we reader, because they give a minute account of their amiable author, at a very interesting period of his life; and because they reflect lustre on his character and genius in various points of view, and cannot fail to inspire the conviction that his letters are rivals to his life and nature with graceful and endearing poems, in the rare excellence of representing fidelity. TO LADY HESKETH. Olney, Oct. 12, 1785. My dear Cousin,-It is no new thing with you to give pleasure. But I will venture to say that you do not often give more than you When I came down to breakfast, and found upon the table a letter franked by my uncle, and when opening that frank I found that it contained a letter from you, I said within myself—“This is just as it should be. We are all grown young again, and the days that I thought I should see no more are actually returned." You perceive, therefore, that you judged well, when you conjectured that a line from you would not be disagreeable to me. It could not be otherwise than as in fact it proved-a most agreeable surprise, for I can truly boast of an affection for you, that neither years nor interrupted intercourse have at all abated. I need only recollect how much I valued you once, and with how much cause, immediately to feel a revival of the same value; if that can be said to revive, which at the most has only been dormant for want of employment. But I slander it when I say that it has slept. A thousand times have I recollected a thousand scenes, in which our two selves have formed the whole of the drama, with the greatest pleasure; at times too when I had no reason to suppose that I should ever hear from you again. I have * Ashley Cowper, Esq. |