hope that you will supply their place as soon as possible. Years are waning apace, and if we mean to cultivate and improve the intercourse we have begun, there is no time to be lost. Let us not have it to say, when we meet in another world, that we might, if we would, have known each other better in this.

It is so long since I wrote my last letter to you, that I cannot at all recollect the date of it; but I seem to remember telling you in it, that I had narrowly escaped the greatest of all my terrors, a nervous fever. To say that I escaped it is indeed saying too much, for I question if I am at any time entirely free from it; but I thank God that I escaped the degree of it with which, in January, I seemed to be threatened. At present I am in pretty good health, yet not quite so well, I think, as in former years at this season. Mrs. Unwin, I believe, is about as well as when she had the pleasure to see you at Weston.

Thus, my dear Madam, I have said all that appears to me worth saying at present. I have told you how we fare ourselves, and that we are anxious to know how it fares with you. I will add nothing but Mrs. Unwin's best compliments, together with my own, to both our friends at Pertenhall, and I am,

Dear Madam,

Affectionately yours,

WM. COWPER.

MY DEAREST COZ,

TO LADY HESKETH.

The Lodge, May 27, 1791. I, WHO am neither dead, nor sick, nor idle, should have no excuse, were I as tardy in answering, as you in writing. I live indeed where leisure abounds; and you, where leisure is not: a difference that accounts sufficiently both for your silence and my loquacity. When you told Mrs. that my Homer would come forth in May, you told her what you believed, and therefore no falsehood. But you told her at the same time what will not happen, and therefore not a truth. There is a medium between truth and falsehood; and (I believe) the word mistake expresses it exactly. I will therefore say that you were mistaken. If instead of May you had mentioned June, I flatter myself that you would have hit the mark. For in June there is every probability that we shall publish. You will say, "hang the printer !-for it is his fault." But stay, my dear, hang him not just now! For to execute him, and find another, will cost us time, and so much too that I question if, in that case, we should publish sooner than in August. To say truth, I am not perfectly sure that there will be any necessity to hang him at all; though that is a matter which I desire to leave entirely at your discretion, alleging only in the mean time, that the man does not appear to me during the last half-year to have been at all in fault. His remittance of sheets in all that time has been punctual, save and except while the Easter holidays lasted, when (I suppose) he found it impossible to keep his devils to their business. I

shall however receive the last sheet of the Odyssey to-morrow, and have already sent up the Preface, together with all the needful. You see therefore that the publication of this famous work cannot be delayed much longer.

As for politics, I reck not, having no room in my head for any thing but the Slave-bill. That is lost; and all the rest is a trifle. I have not seen Paine's book, but refused to see it when it was offered to me. No man shall convince me that I am improperly governed, while I feel the contrary.

Adieu !

W. C.

TO JOHN JOHNSON, ESQ.

MY DEAREST JOHNNY,

Weston, June 1, 1791.

Now you may rest-now I can give you joy of the period, of which I gave you hope in my last; the period of all your labours in my service. But this I can foretell you also, that if you persevere in serving your friends at this rate, your life is likely to be a life of labour:-Yet persevere! your rest will be the sweeter hereafter! In the mean time I wish you, if at any time you should find occasion for him, just such a friend as you have proved to me!

W. C.

MY DEAR SIR,

TO THE REV. MR. HURDIS.

Weston, June 13, 1791.

I OUGHT to have thanked you for your agreeable and entertaining letter much sooner, but I have many correspondents, who will not be said, nay; and have been obliged of late to give my last attentions to Homer. The very last indeed; for yesterday I dispatched to town, after revising them carefully, the proof sheets of subscribers' names, among which I took special notice of yours, and am much obliged to you for it. We have contrived, or rather my bookseller and printer have contrived (for they have never waited a moment for me,) to publish as critically at the wrong time, as if my whole interest and success had depended upon it. March, April, and May, said Johnson to me in a letter that I received from him in February, are the best months for publication. Therefore now it is determined that Homer shall come out on the 1st of July; that is to say, exactly at the moment when, except a few lawyers, not a creature will be left in town who will ever care one farthing about him. To which of these two friends of mine I am indebted for this management, I know not. It does not please; but I would be a philosopher as well as a poet, and therefore make no complaint, or grumble at all about it. You, I presume, have had dealings with them both;how did they manage for you? And if as they have for me, how did you behave under it? Some who love me complain that I am too passive; and I should be glad of an opportunity to justify myself by your example. The fact is, should I thunder ever so loud,

no efforts of that sort will avail me now; therefore like a good economist of my bolts, I choose to reserve them for more profitable occasions.

I am glad to find that your amusements have been so similar to mine; for in this instance too I seemed to have need of somebody to keep me in countenance, especially in my attention and attachment to animals. All the notice that we lords of the creation vouchsafe to bestow on the creatures, is generally to abuse them; it is well therefore that here and there a man should be found a little womanish, or perhaps a little childish in this matter, who will make some amends, by kissing, and coaxing, and laying them in one's bosom. You remember the little ewe lamb, mentioned by the prophet Nathan; the prophet perhaps invented the tale for the sake of its application to David's conscience; but it is more probable that God inspired him with it for that purpose. If he did, it amounts to a proof that he does not overlook, but on the contrary much notices such little partialities and kindness to his dumb creatures, as we, because we articulate, are pleased to call them.

Your sisters are fitter to judge than I, whether assembly rooms are the places of all others, in which the ladies may be studied to most advantage. I am an old fellow, but I had once my dancing days, as you have now; yet I could never find that I had learned half so much of a woman's real character by dancing with her, as by conversing with her at home, where I could observe her behaviour at the table, at the fireside, and in all the trying circumstances of domestic life. We are all good when we are pleased; but she is the good