my emolument. For many, as I understand, have subscribed in consequence, and among the rest several of the public libraries.

I am glad that you have seen the last Northampton dirge, for the rogue of a clerk sent me only half the number of printed copies for which I stipulated with him at first, and they were all expended immediately. The poor man himself is dead now; and whether his successor will continue me in my office, or seek another laureate, has not yet transpired.

I began with being ashamed, and I must end with being so. I am ashamed that, when I wrote by your messenger, I omitted to restore to you Mr. Martyn's letter but it is safe, and shall be yours again. I am sorry that you have suffered so much this winter by your old complaint the rheumatism. We shall both, I hope, be better in a better season, now not very distant; for I have never myself been free from my fever since the middle of January; neither do I expect to be released till summer shall set me free.

I am, my dear madam, with Mrs. Unwin's best compliments to yourself and Mr. King,

Affectionately yours,

Lady Hesketh has left us about a month.

W. C.

TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.

Weston, March 6, 1791.

AFTER all this ploughing and sowing on the plains of Troy, once fruitful, such at least to my translating predecessor, some harvest I hope will arise for me

also. My long work has received its last, last touches; and I am now giving my preface its final adjustment. We are in the fourth Odyssey in the course of our printing, and I expect that I and the swallows shall appear together. They have slept all the winter, but I, on the contrary, have been extremely busy. Yet if I can virûm volitare per ora as swiftly as they through the air, I shall account myself well requited. Adieu !

W. C.

SIR,

TO THE REV. MR. HURDIS.

Weston, March 6, 1791. I HAVE always entertained, and have occasionally avowed, a great degree of respect for the abilities of the unknown author of the Village Curate, unknown at that time, but now well known, and not to me only, but to many. For before I was favoured with your obliging letter, I knew your name, your place of abode, your profession, and that you had four sisters; all which I learned neither from our bookseller, nor from any of his connexions; you will perceive therefore that you are no longer an author incognito. The writer indeed of many passages that have fallen from your pen could not long continue so. Let genius, true genius, conceal itself where it may, we may say of it, as the young man in Terence of his beautiful mistress, "Diu latere non potest."

kind offers of service,

I am obliged to you for your and will not say that I shall not be troublesome to

you hereafter; but at present I have no need to be so.

I have within these two days given the very last stroke of my pen to my long Translation, and what will be my next career I know not. At any rate we shall not, I hope, hereafter be known to each other as poets only, for your writings have made me ambitious of a nearer approach to you. Your door, however, will never be opened to me. My fate and fortune have combined with my natural disposition to draw a circle round me which I cannot pass; nor have I been more than thirteen miles from home these twenty years, and so far very seldom. But you are a younger man, and therefore may not be quite so immoveable; in which case, should you choose at any time to move Westonward, you will always find me happy to receive you; and in the mean time I remain, with much respect, Your most obedient servant, critic, and friend,

W. C.

P. S. I wish to know what you mean to do with Sir Thomas'. For though I expressed doubts about his theatrical possibilities, I think him a very respectable person, and with some improvement well worthy of being introduced to the public.

TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.

March 10, 1791.

GIVE my affectionate remembrances to your sisters, and tell them I am impatient to entertain them with old story new dressed.

my

Sir Thomas More, a Tragedy.

I have two French prints hanging in my study, both on Iliad subjects; and I have an English one in the parlour, on a subject from the same poem. In one of the former, Agamemnon addresses Achilles exactly in the attitude of a dancing-master turning miss in a minuet: in the latter the figures are plain, and the attitudes plain also. This is, in some considerable measure I believe, the difference between my translation and Pope's; and will serve as an exemplification of what I am going to lay before you and the public.

W. C.

TO CLOTWORTHY ROWLEY, ESQ.

MY DEAR ROWLEY,

Weston Underwood,
March 14, 1791.

MONDAY morning is a time that I now devote to my correspondents in particular, and therefore I devote the present morning to you. Monday is a dies non Homericus, a day on which, having dispatched all the proof sheets of the preceding week, and as yet received no others, I am free from all engagement to Homer.

I have sent my bookseller the names which you transmitted to me (for which I now thank with a you, lively sense of the kindness you have shown, and of the honour they will do me). I have sent them copied with the greatest care. There is no danger, I hope, that they will not be accurately printed, for I shall revise the proofs of the subscription list myself. I have also given him the minutest instructions, and the clearest possible, concerning the conveyance of the books to your country as soon as they shall be ready

for exportation, copying them from your letter. Thus nothing has been or shall be wanting on my part to promote the proper management, and effect a decent conclusion of this business.

And now I will say, Oh my poor worried and tormented friend! why wast thou not, like me, a writer of verses, or almost any thing rather than a member of parliament? Had you been only a poor poet, the critics indeed might probably have given you some trouble; for that inconvenience no poet may hope to escape entirely, but the trouble that they can give, how trivial is it compared with that of a contested election! I heartily wish you well out of all this troublesome business, and hope that you will be able to tell me in your next that you are, and that all is settled to your mind.

I inquired of you in my last, if you knew aught, or had ever by accident heard of such a person as a Mr. Kellet of Cork, a banker. Application was made to him long since for a subscription to my Homer, and for his interest on that behalf, but he has returned no answer. He is a sort of relation of mine by marriage, having chosen his wife out of my own mother's family, and his silence on this occasion makes me curious to know whether, as Homer says, he still opens his eyes on the bright lamp of day, or have already journeyed down into the house of Hades. If you can possibly, without giving yourself the least trouble, for of that you have already as much as may content any reasonable man,-procure me any intelligence respecting this dumb body, you will oblige me by doing so.