woman, who wants not a fiddle to sweeten her. If I am wrong, the young ladies will set me right; in the mean time I will not tease you with graver arguments on the subject, especially as I have a hope that years, and the study of the Scripture, and His Spirit whose word it is, will in due time bring you to my way of thinking. I am not one of those sages, who require that young men should be as old as themselves before they have had time to be so. With my love to your fair sisters, I remain, W. C. MY DEAR FRIEND, TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. The Lodge, June 15, 1791. IF it will afford you any comfort that you have a share in my affections, of that comfort you may avail yourself at all times. You have acquired it by means which, unless I should become worthless myself to an uncommon degree, will always secure you from the loss of it. You are learning what all learn, though few at so early an age, that man is an ungrateful animal; and that benefits too often, instead of securing a due return, operate rather as provocations to ill-treatment. This I take to be the summum malum of the human heart. Towards God we are all guilty of it more or less; but between man and man, we may thank God for it, there are some exceptions. He leaves this peccant principle to operate in some degree against himself in all, for our humiliation I suppose; and because the pernicious effects of it in reality cannot injure him, he cannot suffer by them; but he knows that unless he should restrain its influence on the dealings of mankind with each other, the bonds of society would be dissolved, and all charitable intercourse at an end amongst us. It was said of Archbishop Cranmer, “Do him an ill-turn, and you make him your friend for ever;" of others it may be said, "Do them a good one, and they will be for ever your enemies." It is the grace of God only that makes the difference. The absence of Homer (for we have now shaken hands and parted) is well supplied by three relations of mine from Norfolk. My cousin Johnson, an aunt of his, and his sister. I love them all dearly, and am well contented to resign to them the place in my attentions so lately occupied by the chiefs of Greece and Troy. His aunt and I have spent many a merry day together, when we were some forty years younger; and we make shift to be merry together still. His sister is a sweet young woman, graceful, good-natured, and gentle, just what I had imagined her to be before I had seen her. YOUR letter and obliging present from so great a distance deserved a speedier acknowledgment, and should not have wanted one so long, had not circumstances so fallen out since I received them as to make it impossible for me to write sooner. It is indeed but within this day or two that I have heard how, by the help of my bookseller, I may transmit an answer to you. It Thus My titlepage, as it well might, misled you. speaks me of the Inner Temple, and so I am, but a member of that society only, not as an inhabitant. I live here almost at the distance of sixty miles from London, which I have not visited these eight-andtwenty years, and probably never shall again. it fell out, that Mr. Morewood had sailed again for America before your parcel reached me; nor should I (it is likely) have received it at all, had not a cousin of mine, who lives in the Temple, by good fortune received it first, and opened your letter; finding for whom it was intended, he transmitted to me both that and the parcel. Your testimony of approbation of what I have published, coming from another quarter of the globe, could not but be extremely flattering, as was your obliging notice that the Task had been reprinted in your city. Both volumes, I hope, have a tendency to discountenance vice, and promote the best interests of mankind. But how far they shall be effectual to these invaluable purposes, depends altogether on His blessing, whose truths I have endeavoured to inculcate. In the mean time I have sufficient proof that readers may be pleased, may approve, and yet lay down the book unedified. During the last five years I have been occupied with a work of a very different nature, a translation of the Iliad and Odyssey into blank verse, and the work is now ready for publication. I undertook it, partly because Pope's is too lax a version, which has lately occasioned the learned of this country to call aloud for a new one, and partly because I could fall on no better expedient to amuse a mind too much addicted to melancholy. I send you in return for the volumes with which you favoured me, three on religious subjects, popular productions that have not been long published, and that may not therefore yet have reached your country; The Christian Officer's Panoply, by a marine officer -The Importance of the Manners of the Great, and an Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World. The two last are said to be written by a lady, Miss Hannah More, and are universally read by people of that rank to which she addresses them. Your man ners I suppose may be more pure than ours, yet it is not unlikely that even among you may be found some to whom her strictures are applicable. I return you my thanks, Sir, for the volumes you sent me, two of which I have read with pleasure, Mr. Edwards's book, and the Conquest of Canaan. The rest I have not had time to read, except Dr. Dwight's Sermon, which pleased me almost more than any that I have either seen or heard. I shall account a correspondence with you an honour, and remain, dear Sir, Your obliged and obedient servant, W. C. TO LADY HESKETH. The Lodge, June 23, 1791. SEND me a draft, my dearest coz, for as much money as I hope thou hast by this time received on my account, viz. from Anonymous, and viz. from Wm. Cowper, for we are driven to our last guinea. Let me have it by Sunday's post, lest we become absolutely insolvent. We have received beef, tongues, and tea, As I said, so it proves. I told you that I should like our guests when they had been here a day or two, and accordingly I like them so well now that it is impossible to like them better. Mrs. Balls is an unaffected, plain-dressing, good-tempered, cheerful, motherly sort of a body, and has the affection of a parent for her niece and nephew. Her niece is an amiable young woman in all respects, a handsome likeness of Johnny, and with a smile so like my mother's, that in this cousin of mine she seems almost restored to me again. I would that she had better health, but she has suffered sadly in her constitution by divers causes, and especially by nursing her father in his last illness, from whose side she stirred not till he expired. Johnny, with whom I have been always delighted, is also so much in love with me that no place in the world will suit him to live in at present, except Weston. Where he lives his sister will live S. C.-7. D |