have, therefore, long since bid adieu to all hope from human means,-the means excep.ed of perpetual employment. shall effect much good in this matter. So far as I can learn, and I have had intelligence from a quarter within the reach of such as is respectable, our governors are not animated altogether with such heroic ardor as the or I will not say that we shall never meet, because it is not for a creature who knows not what shall be to-morrow to assert any-casion might inspire. They consult frequent. ly indeed in the cabinet about it, but the frequency of their consultations in a case so plain as this would be, did not what Shakspeare calls commodity, and what we call political expediency, cast a cloud over it, rather bespeaks a desire to save appearances than to interpose to purpose. Laws will, I suppose, be enacted for the more humane treatment of the negroes: but who shall see to the execution of them? The planters will not, and the negroes cannot. In fact, we know that laws of this tendency have not been wanting, enacted even amongst themselves, but there has been always a want of prosecutors, or righteous judges; deficiencies which will not be very easily supplied. The newspapers have lately told us that these merciful masters have, on this occasion, been occupied in passing ordinances, by which the lives and limbs of their slaves are to be secured from wanton cruelty hereafter. But who does not immediately detect the artifice, or can give them a moment's credit for anything more than a design, by this show of lenity, to avert the storm which they think hangs over them? On the whole, I fear there is reason to wish, for the honor of England, that the nuisance had never been troubled, lest we eventually make ourselves justly chargeable with the whole offence by not removing it. The enormity cannot be palliated; we can no longer plead that we were not aware of it, or that our attention was otherwise engaged, and shall be inexcusable therefore ourselves if we leave the least part of it unredressed. Such arguments as Pharaoh might have used to justify the de struction of the Israelites, substituting only sugar for bricks, may lie ready for our use also; but I think we can find no better. We are tolerably well, and shall rejoice to hear that, as the year rises, Mrs. Newton's health keeps pace with it. Believe me, my dear friend, thing positively concerning the future. Things more unlikely I have yet seen brought to pass, and things which, if I had expressed myself of them at all, I should have said were impossible. But, being respectively circumstanced as we are, there seems no present probability of it. You speak of insuperable hindrances; and I also have hindrances that would be equally difficult to surmount. One is, that I never ride, that I am not able to perform a journey on foot, and that chaises do not roll within the sphere of that economy which my circumstances oblige me to observe. If this were not of itself sufficient to excuse me, when I decline so obliging an invitation as yours, I could mention yet other obstacles. But to what end? One impracticability makes as effectual a barrier as a thousand. It will be otherwise in other worlds. Either we shall not bear about us a body, or it will be more easily transportable than this. In the meantime, by the help of the post, strangers to each other may cease to be such, as you and I have already begun to experience. It is indeed, madam, as you say, a foolish world, and likely to continue such till the Great Teacher shall himself vouchsafe to make it wiser. I am persuaded that time alone will never mend it. But there is doubtless a day appointed when there shall be a more general manifestation of the beauty of holiness than mankind have ever yet beheld. When that period shall arrive there will be an end of profane representations, whether of heaven or hell, on the stage: the great realities will supercede them. I have just discovered that I have written to you on paper so transparent that it will hardly keep the contents a secret. Excuse the mistake, and believe me, dear madam, with my respects to Mr. King, Affectionately yours, W. C. The slow progress of the abolition cause, and the nature of the difficulties, are adverted to in the following letter. TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.* Weston, April 19, 1788. My dear Friend,-I thank you for your last, and for the verses in particular therein contained, in which there is not on y rhyme but reason. And yet I fear that neither you por I, with all our reasoning and rhyming, * Private correspondence. Affectionately and truly your, W. C. TO LADY HESKETH. The Lodge, May 6, 1788. My dearest Cousin,-You ask me how I like Smollett's Don Quixote? I answer, well; perhaps better than anybody's: but, having no skill in the original, some diffidence be comes me: that is to say, I do not know whether I ought to prefer it or not. Yet, there is so little deviation from other versions which I have seen that I do not much hesi. tate. It has made me laugh I know immoderately, and in such a case ça suffit. A thousand thanks, my dear, for the new convenience in the way of stowage which you are so kind as to intend me. There is nothing in which I am so deficient as repositories for letters, papers, and litter of all sorts. Your last present has helped me somewhat, but not with respect to such things as require lock and key, which are numerous. A box, therefore, so secured, will be to me an invaluable acquisition. And, since you leave me to my option, what shall be the size thereof, I of course prefer a folio. On the back of the book-seeming box, some artist expert in those matters, may inscribe these words, Collectanea curiosa, the English of which is, a collection of osities. A title which I prefer to all others, because if I live, I shall take care that the box shall merit it, and because it will operate as an incentive to open that which being locked cannot be opened: for in these cases the greater the baulk the more wit is discovered by the ingenious contriver of it, viz., myself. The General, I understand by his last letter, is in town. In my last to him I told him news, possibly it will give you pleasure, and ought for that reason to be made known to you as soon as possible. My friend Rowley, who I told you has, after twenty-five years' silence, renewed his correspondence with me, and who now lives in Ireland, where he has many and considerable connexions, has sent to me for thirty subscription papers.* Rowley is one of the most benevolent and friendly creatures in the world, and will, I dare say, do all in his power to serve me. I am just recovered from a violent cold, attended by a cough, which split my head while it lasted. I escaped these tortures all the winter, but whose constitution, or what skin, can possibly be proof against our vernal breezes in England? Mine never were, nor will be. Totus teres atque rotundus, and may set fortune at defiance. The books, which had been my father's, had, most of them, his arms on the inside cover, but the rest no mark, neither his name nor mine. I could mourn for them like Sancho for his Dapple, but it would avail me nothing. You will oblige me much by sending me curi-"Crazy Kate." A gentleman last winter promised me both her and the "Lace-maker," but he went to London, that place in which, as in the grave, "all things are forgotten," and I have never seen either of them.* I begin to find some prospect of a conclusion, of the Iliad at least, now opening upon me, having reached the eighteenth book. Your letter found me yesterday in the very fact of dispersing the whole host of Troy, by the voice only of Achilles. There is nothing extravagant in the idea, for you have witnessed a similar effect attending even such a voice as mine, at midnight, from a garret window, on the dogs of a whole parish, whom I have put to flight in a moment. W. C. When people are intimate, we say they are as great as two inkle-weavers, on which expression I have to remark, in the first place, that the word great is here used in a sense which the corresponding term has not, so far as I know, in any other language, and secondly, that inkle-weavers contract intimacies with each other sooner than other people on account of their juxtaposition in weaving of inkle. Hence it is that Mr. Gregson and I emulate those happy weavers in the closeness of our connexion. We live near to each other, and while the Hall is empty are each other's only extraforaneous comfort. Most truly thine, W. C. TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ. Weston, May 8, 1752. for a lost thing forever. The only consola Alas! n y library-I must now give it up tion belonging to the circumstance is, o seems to be, that no such loss did ever befall any other man, or can ever befall me again As far as books are concerned I am For his version of Homer. ↑ Mr. Gregson was chaplain to Mr. Throckmorton. His high sense of the character and qualifications of Lady Hesketh is pleasingly expressed in the following letter, where Mrs. Montagu's coteries in Portman-square are also alluded to. TO LADY HESKETH. The Lodge, May 12, 1788. It is probable, my dearest coz., that I shall not be able to write much, but as much as I can I will. The time between rising and breakfast is all that I can at present find, and this morning I lay longer than usual. In the style of the lady's note to yon, I can easily perceive a smatch of her charac ter. Neither men nor women write with such neatness of expression, who have not given a good deal of attention to language, and qualified themselves by study. At the same time it gave me much more pleasure to observe, that my coz., though not standing on the pinnacle of renown quite so elevated *He alludes to engravings of these two characters, which had acquired much popularity with the public, especially Crazy Kate, beginning, "There often wanders one, whom better days," &c. &c. † Mrs. Montagu. as that which lifts Mrs. Montagu to the I cannot say that poor Kate resembles muct elouds, falls in no degree short of her in this the original, who was neither so young noi particular; so that, should she make you a so handsome as the pencil has represented member of her academy,* she will do it honor. her; but she has a figure well suited to the Suspect me not of flattering you, for I abhor account given of her in "The Task," and the thought; neither will you suspect it. has a face exceedingly expressive of despairRecollect that it is an invariable rule with ing melancholy. The Lace-maker is acci me never to pay compliments to those I love.dentally a good likeness of a young woman once our neighbor, who was hardly less hand some than the picture twenty years ago; but the loss of one husband, and the acquisition of another, have, since that time, impaired her much; yet she might still be supposed to have sat to the artist.* I | Two days, en suite, I have walked to Gayhurst, a longer journey than I have walked on foot these seventeen years. The first day I went alone, designing merely to make the experiment, and choosing to be at liberty to return at whatsoever point of my pilgrimage I should find myself fatigued. For I was not without suspicion that years, and some other things no less injurious than years, viz., melancholy and distress of mind, might by this time have unfitted me for such achievements. But I found it otherwise. I reached the church, which stands, as you know, in the garden, in fifty-five minutes, and returned in ditto time to Weston. The next day I took the same walk with Mr. Powley, having a desire to show him the prettiest place in the country. I not only performed these two excursions without injury to my health, but have by means of them gained indisputable proof that my ambulatory faculty is not yet impaired; a discovery which, considering that to my feet alone I am likely, as I have ever been, to be indebted always for my transportation from place to place, I find very delectable. You will find in the last Gentleman's Magazine a sonnet, addressed to Henry Cowper, signed T. H. I am the writer of it. No creature knows this but yourself; you will make what use of the intelligence you shall see good. W. C. TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ. My dear Friend, For two excellent prints A large mansion near Newport Pagnel, formerly beonging to Miss Wright. 7 The Rev Mr. Powley married Mrs Unwin's daugh r. We dined yesterday with your friend and mine, the most companionable and domestic Mr. C The whole kingdom can hardly furnish a spectacle more pleasing to a man who has a taste for true happiness, than himself, Mrs. C—, and their multitudinous family. Seven long miles are interposed between us, or perhaps I should oftener have an opportunity of declaiming on this subject. I am now in the nineteenth book of the Iliad, and on the point of displaying such feats of heroism performed by Achilles as make all other achievements trivial. I may well exclaim, "O for a Muse of fire!" especially having not only a great host to cope with, but a great river also; much, however, may be done when Homer leads the way. I should not have chosen to have been the original author of such a business even though all the Nine had stood at my elbow. Time has wonderful effects. We admire that in an ancient, for which we should send a modern bard to Bedlam. I saw at Mr. C's a great curiosity-al. antique bust of Paris, in Parian marble. You will conclude that it interested me exceedingly. I pleased myself with supposing that it once stood in Helen's chamber. It was in fact brought from the Levant, and, though not well mended, (for it had suffered much by time,) is an admirable performance. W. C. *The Blue-stocking Club, or Bas bleu. The following is the account of the origin of the Bluestocking Club, extracted from Boswell's "Life of Johnson:"About this time (1781) it was much the fashion for several ladies to hay evening assemblies, where the fair sex might partici. in conversation with literary and ingenious men, animated by a desire to please. These societies were desenated Blue-stocking Clubs, the origin of which title being little known, it may be worth while to relate it. One of the most eminent :nembers of these societies, when they first commenced, was Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet, (author of tracts relating to natural history, &c.) whose dress was remarkably grave, and in particular it was observed that he wore blue stockings. Such was the excellence of his conversation, that his absence was felt as so great a loss, that it used to be said, We can do nothing without the blue stockings;" and thus by degrees the title was established. Miss Hannah More has admirably described a Blue-stocking TO THE REV. WILLIAM BULL. Club, in her Bas Bleu, a poem in which many of the they shall be performed; but ask not hymns persons who were most conspicuous there are mentioned." Mr. Bull had urged Cowper once more to employ the powers of his pen, in what he so eminently excelled, the composition of hymns expressive of resignation to the will of God. It is much to be lamented that he here declines what would so essentially have promoted the interests of true religion. * Poor Kate and the Lace-maker were portraits drawn from real life. † Mr. Chester, of Chicheley, near Newport Pagnel Private correspondence. existence.* from a man suffering by despair as I do. I superior judgment; I am now reading, and could not sing the Lord's song were it to have reached the middle of her Essay on the save my life, banished as I am, not to a Genius of Shakspeare; a book of which, strange land, but to a remoteness from his strange as it may seem, though I must have presence, in comparison with which the dis-read it formerly, I had absolutely forgot the tance from east to west is no distance, is vicinity and cohesion. I dare not, either in prose or verse, allow myself to express a frame of mind which I am conscious does not belong to me; least of all can I venture to use the language of absolute resignation, lest, only counterfeiting, I should for that very reason be taken strictly at my word, and lose all my remaining comfort. Can there not be found among those translations of Madame Guion somewhat that might serve the purpose? I should think there might. Submission to the will of Christ, my memory tells me, is a theme that pervades them all. If so, your request is performed already; and if any alteration in them should be necessary, I will with all my heart make it. I have no objection to giving the graces of the foreigner an English dress, but insuperable ones to all false pretences and affected exhibitions of what I do not feel. The learning, the good sense, the sound judgment, and the wit displayed in it, fully justify not only my compliment, but all compliments that either have been already paid to her talents, or shall be paid hereafter. Voltaire, I doubt not, rejoiced that his antag onist wrote in English, and that his country. men could not possibly be judges of the dis pute. Could they have known how much she was in the right, and by how many thousand miles the bard of Avon is superior to all their dramatists, the French critic would have lost half his fame among them. I saw at Mr. Chester's a head of Paris; an antique of Parian marble. His uncle, who left him the estate, brought it, as I understand, from the Levant: you may suppose I viewed it with all the enthusiasm that belongs to a translator of Homer. It is in reality a great curiosity, and highly valuable. Our friend Sephust has sent me two Hoping that you will have the grace to be resigned most perfectly to this disappoint-prints; the Lace-maker and Crazy Kate. ment, which you should not have suffered These also I have contemplated with pleashad it been in my power to prevent it, I ure, having, as you know, a particular interremain, with our best remembrances to Mr. est in them. The former is not more beauThornton, tiful than a lace-maker once our neighbor at Olney; though the artist has assembled as many charms in her countenance as I ever saw in any countenance, one excepted. Kate is both younger and handsomer than the original from which I drew, but she is in good style, and as mad as need be. Ever affectionately yours, W. C. TO LADY HESKETH. The Lodge, May 27, 1788. My dear Coz.,-The General, in a letter which came yesterday, sent me inclosed a copy of my sonnet; thus introducing it. "I send a copy of verses somebody has written for the Gentleman's Magazine for April last. Independent of my partiality towards the subject, I think the lines themselves are good." Thus it appears that my poetical adventure has succeeded to my wish, and I write to him by this post, on purpose to inform him that the somebody in question is myself.* I no longer wonder that Mrs. Montagu stands at the head of all that is called learned, and that every critic vails his bonnet to her * Mr. Henry Cowper, who was reading-clerk in the House of Lords, was remarkable for the clearness and melody of his voice. This qualification is happily alluded to by the poet, in the following lines:"Thou art not voice alone, but hast besides Both heart and head, and couldst with music sweet Lord-Chancellor Ccwer, and Spencer Cowper, ChiefJustice of Chester. How does this hot weather suit thee, my dear, in London? as for me, with all my colonnades and bowers, I am quite oppressed by it. W. C. TO LADY HESKETH. The Lodge, June 3, 1788. My dearest Cousin,-The excessive heat of these last few days was indeed oppressive, but, excepting the languor that is occasioned both in my mind and body, it was far from being prejudicial to me. It opened ten thousand pores, by which as many mischiefs, the effects of long obstructions, began to breathe themselves forth abundantly. Then came an east wind, baneful to me at all times, but fol *This essay contributed very much to establish the literary character of Mrs. Montagu, as a woman of taste and learning; and to vindicate Shakspeare from the sallies of the wit of Voltaire, who comprehended his genius as little as the immortal poem of the "Paradise Lost." It is well known how Young replied to his frivolous raillery on the latter work: "Thou art so witty, profligate. and thin, At once we think thee Milton's Death and Sin" † Mr. Hill. owing so closely such a sultry season, un-relieved. The last sudden change of the commonly noxious. To speak in the seaman's weather, from heat almost insupportable to a phrase, not entirely strange to you, I was cold as severe as is commonly felt in midwin. taken all aback; and the humors which would ter, would have disabled me entirely for all have escaped, if old Eurus would have given sorts of scribbling, had I not favored in eak them leave, finding every door shut, have part a little, and given my eyes a respite. fallen into my eyes. But, in a country like this, poor miserable mortals must be content to suffer all that sudden and violent changes can inflict; and if they are quit for about half the plagues that Caliban calls down on Prospero, they may say, "We are well off," and dance for joy, if the rheumatism or cramp will let them. It is certain that we do not live far from Olney, but small as the distance is, it has too often the effect of a separation between the Beans and us. He is a man with whom, when I can converse at all, I can converse on terms perfectly agreeable to myself; who does not distress me with forms, nor yet disgust me by the neglect of them; whose manners are easy and natural, and his observations always sensible. I often, therefore, wish them nearer neighbors. We have heard nothing of the Powleys since they left us, a fortnight ago, and should be uneasy at their silence on such an occasion, did we not know that she cannot write, and that he, on his first return to his parish after a long absence, may possibly find it difficult. Her we found much improved in her health and spirits, and him, as always, affectionate and obliging. It was an agreeable visit, and, as it was ordered for me, I happened to have better spirits than I have enjoyed at any time since. I shall rejoice if your friend Mr. Philips, influenced by what you told him of my present engagements, shall waive his applicatoin to me for a poem on the slave-trade. I account myself honored by his intention to solicit me refuse him, which inevitably I shall be conon the subject, and it would give me pain to strained to do. The more I have considered it, the more I have convinced myself that it is not a promising theme for verse. General avail nothing. The world has been overcensure on the iniquity of the practice will whelmed with such remarks already, and to particularize all the horrors of it were an employment for the mind both of the poet and his readers, of which they would necessarily soon grow weary. For my own part, I cannot contemplate the subject very nearly, without a degree of abhorrence that affects my spirits, and sinks them below the pitch requisite for success in verse. Lady Hesketh recommended it to me some months since, and then I declined it for these reasons, and for others which need not be mentioned here. I return you many thanks for all your intelligence concerning the success of the gospel in far countries, and shall rejoice in a sight of Mr. Van Lier's letter,* which, being so voluminous, I think you should bring with you, when you take your flight to Weston, rather than commit to any other conveyance. Remember that it is now summer, and that Did you ever see an advertisement by one Fowle, a dancing-master of Newport-Pagnel? If not, I will contrive to send it to you for your amusement. It is the most extravagantly iadicrous affair of the kind I ever saw. The author of it had the good hap to be crazed, or he had never produced anything half so clever; for you will ever observe, that they who are said to have lost their wits have more than other people. It is therefore only a slander, with which envy prompts the malignity of persons in their senses to asperse those wittier than themselves. But there are countries in the world where the mad have justice done them, where they are revered as the subiects of inspiration, and consuited as oracles. Poor Fowle would have made a figure there. W. C. In the next letter Cowper declines writing further on the subject of the slave trade: the horrors connected with it are the reasons as signed for this refusal. His past efforts in that cause are the best evidence of his ability to write upon it with powerful effect. The sensitive mind of Cowper shrunk with terror from these appalling atrocities. TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.* My dear Friend, -It is a comfort to me that you are so kind as to make allowance for me, in consideration of my being so busy a man. The truth is that, could I write with both hands, and with both at the same time, verse with one and prose with the other, I should not even so be able to despatch both my poetry and my arrears of correspondence faster than I have need. The only opportunities that I can find for conversing with distant friends are in the early hour (and that sometimes reduced to half a one) before breakfast. Neither am I exempt from hindrances, which, while they last, are insurmountole; especially one, by which I have been eccasionally a sufferer all my life. I mean ar. inflammation of the eyes; a malady under which I have lately labored, and from which ar at this moment only in a small degree * Private correspondence. * Mr. Van Lier was a Dutch minister, to whom the perusal of Mr. Newton's works had been made eminently useful. We shall have occasion to allude to this subject in its proper place. |