TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Jan. 13, 1782. HAVING just read yours, I begin to answer it; the basket presenting me with a fair opportunity to save a frank, and my time being entirely at my own disposal, which possibly may not be the case to-morrow. As to Johnson, he sometimes promises fair, and proceeds with tolerable dispatch, so that I begin to flatter myself with the hope of a speedy publication; then comes an interval of three weeks perhaps, and nothing done. It is a fortnight this day since I returned his last packet, and though one more cover may contain all that is yet behind, I know not but another week at least may elapse before he sends it. Then we are to begin again, and the whole is to undergo a second revisal, which, if it proceeds as slowly as the first, will cost another year. In the meanwhile, having some, though not the keenest, feelings of an author, I am not always very well pleased. I suspect that he gives a preference to others who engaged him not so early as myself, and that my distance from the spot is used to my disadvantage. But having other and much weightier cares and concerns to carry, I presently discharge my shoulders of this, and am but little incumbered by it. If it should fall in your way to ask him what he intends, or whether he does not think that we are in some danger of losing the season, considering how much remains to be done, I shall be obliged to you for putting the question to him.

Your answer respecting Ætna is quite satisfactory, and gives me much pleasure. I hate altering, though

I never refuse the task when propriety seems to enjoin it; and an alteration in this instance, if I am not mistaken, would have been singularly difficult. Indeed, when a piece has been finished two or three years, and an author finds occasion to amend, or make an addition to it, it is not easy to fall upon the very vein from which he drew his ideas in the first instance; but either a different turn of thought, or expression, will betray the patch, and convince a reader of discernment that it has been cobbled and vamped.

I believe I did not thank you for your anecdotes, either foreign or domestic, in my last, therefore I do it now; and still feel myself, as I did at the time, truly obliged to you for them. More is to be learned from one matter of fact than from a thousand speculations. But, alas! what course can government take? I have heard (for I never made the experiment) that if a man grasp a red-hot iron with his naked hand, it will stick to him, so that he cannot presently disengage himself from it. Such are the colonies in the hands of administration. While they hold them they burn their fingers, and yet they must not quit them. I know not whether your sentiments and mine upon this part of the subject exactly coincide, but you will know, when you understand what mine are. It appears to me, that the King is bound, both by the duty he owes to himself and to his people, to consider himself with respect to every inch of his territories, as a trustee deriving his interest in them from God, and invested with them by divine authority for the benefit of his subjects. As he may not sell them or waste them, so he may not resign them to an enemy, or transfer his

right to govern them to any, not even to themselves, so long as it is possible for him to keep it. If he does, he betrays at once his own interest, and that of his other dominions. It may be said, suppose Providence has ordained that they shall be wrested from him, how then? I answer, that cannot appear to be the case, till God's purpose is actually accomplished; and in the mean time the most probable prospect of such an event does not release him from his obligation to hold them to the last moment, for as much as adverse appearances are no infallible indication of God's designs, but may give place to more comfortable symptoms, when we least expect it. Viewing the thing in this light, if I sat on his Majesty's throne, I should be as obstinate as he; because if I quitted the contest, while I had any means left of carrying it on, I should never know that I had not relinquished what I might have retained, or be able to render a satisfactory answer to the doubts and enquiries of my own conscience.

I am rather pleased that you have adopted other sentiments respecting our intended present to the critical Doctor. I allow him to be a man of gigantic talents, and most profound learning, nor have any doubts about the universality of his knowledge. But by what I have seen of his animadversions on the poets, I feel myself much disposed to question, in many instances, either his candour or his taste. He finds fault too often, like a man that, having sought it very industriously, is at last obliged to stick it upon a pin's point, and look at it through a microscope; and I am sure I could easily convict him of having denied

many beauties, and overlooked more. Whether his judgement be in itself defective, or whether it be warped by collateral considerations, a writer upon such subjects as I have chosen would probably find but little mercy at his hands.

We are truly sorry to hear you speak so doubtfully of your journey hither, and hope a substitute will be found are thankful for a sight of your new convert's letter, and hope it will prove the harbinger of many yet unborn. The sugar has arrived safe, and Mrs. Unwin thanks Mrs. Newton for her care of it. Poor Peggy one would have hoped she might have been safe from such a rencontre in an hospital. We are glad however that she is better. Be pleased to remember us to Sally.

Mr. Scott will be upon the road to-morrow. Our love to you both, and to the young Euphrosyne; the old lady of that name being long since dead, if she pleases she shall fill her vacant office, and be my Muse hereafter.

Yours, my dear Sir,

W. C.

TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.

MY DEAR WILLIAM,

Jan. 17, 1782.

I AM glad we agree in our opinion of King Critic, and the writers on whom he has bestowed his animadversions. It is a matter of indifference to me whether I think with the world at large or not, but I wish my friends to be of my mind. The same work will wear a different appearance in the eyes of the same man,

according to the different views with which he reads it; if merely for his amusement, his candour being in less danger of a twist from interest or prejudice, he is pleased with what is really pleasing, and is not over curious to discover a blemish, because the exercise of a minute exactness is not consistent with his purpose. But if he once becomes a critic by trade, the case is altered. He must then at any rate establish, if he can, an opinion in every mind, of his uncommon discernment, and his exquisite taste. This great end he can never accomplish by thinking in the track that has been beaten under the hoof of public judgement. He must endeavour to convince the world, that their favourite authors have more faults than they are aware of, and such as they have never suspected. Having marked out a writer universally esteemed, whom he finds it for that very reason convenient to depreciate and traduce, he will overlook some of his beauties, he will faintly praise others, and in such a manner as to make thousands, more modest, though quite as judicious as himself, question whether they are beauties at all. Can there be a stronger illustration of all that I have said, than the severity of Johnson's remarks upon Prior, I might have said the injustice? His reputation as an author who, with much labour indeed, but with admirable success, has embellished all his poems with the most charming ease, stood unshaken till Johnson thrust his head against it. And how does he attack him in this his principal fort? I cannot recollect his very words, but I am much mistaken indeed if my memory fails me with respect to the purport of them. "His words," he says, 66 appear to be forced into