The boat borne downward with the tide, I have not forgot, though when I wrote last I did not think of answering your kind invitation. I can only say at present, that Stock shall be my first visit, but that visiting at this time would be attended with insupportable awkwardness to me, and with such as the visited themselves would assuredly feel the weight of. My witticisms are only current upon paper now, and that sort of paper currency must serve, like the Congress dollars for want of the more valuable coin, myself. We thank you for the intended salmon, and beg you would get yourself made Bishop of Chichester as soon as possible, that we may have to thank you for every kind of eatable fish the British coast produces. Yours ever, WM. COWPER. I have hurried to the end as fast as possible, being weary of a letter that is one continued blot. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. MY DEAR FRIEND, April 2, 1781. FINE weather, and a variety of extraforaneous occupations (search Johnson's dictionary for that word, and if not found there, insert it-for it saves a deal of circumlocution, and is very lawfully compounded) make it difficult, (excuse the length of a parenthesis, which I did not foresee the length of when I began it, and which may perhaps a little perplex the sense of what I am writing, though, as I seldom deal in that figure of speech, I have the less need to make an apology for doing it at present,) make it difficult (I say) for me to find opportunities for writing. My morning is engrossed by the garden; and in the afternoon, till I have drunk tea, I am fit for nothing. At five o'clock we walk; and when the walk is over, lassitude recommends rest, and again I become fit for nothing. The current hour therefore which (I need not tell you) is comprised in the interval between four and five, is devoted to your service, as the only one in the twentyfour which is not otherwise engaged. I do not wonder that you have felt a great deal upon the occasion you mention in your last, especially on account of the asperity you have met with in the behaviour of your friend. Reflect however that as it is natural to you to have very fine feelings, it is equally natural to some other tempers, to leave those feelings entirely out of the question, and to speak to you, and to act towards you, just as they do towards the rest of mankind, without the least attention to the irritability of your system. Men of a rough and unsparing address should take great care that they be always in the right; the justness and propriety of their sentiments and censures being the only tolerable apology that can be made for such a conduct, especially in a country where civility of behaviour is inculcated even from the cradle. But in the instance now under our contemplation I think you a sufferer under the weight of an animadversion not founded in truth, and which, consequently, you did not deserve. I account him faithful in the pulpit, who dissembles nothing that he believes, for fear of giving offence. To accommodate a discourse to the judgement and opinion of others, for the sake of pleasing them, though by doing so we are obliged to depart widely from our own, is to be unfaithful to ourselves at least, and cannot be accounted fidelity to him, whom we profess to serve. But there are few men who do not stand in need of the exercise of charity and forbearance; and the gentleman in question has afforded you an ample opportunity in this respect, to show how readily, though differing in your views, you can practise all that he could possibly expect from you, if your persuasion corresponded exactly with his own. With respect to Monsieur le Curé, I think you not quite excusable for suffering such a man to give you any uneasiness at all. The grossness and injustice of his demand ought to be its own antidote. If a robber should miscall you a pitiful fellow for not carrying a purse full of gold about you, would his brutality give you any concern? I suppose not. Why then have you been distressed in the present instance? Yours, W. C. TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. MY DEAR FRIEND, April 8, 1781. SINCE I commenced author, my letters are even less worth your acceptance than they were before. I shall soon, however, lay down the character, and cease to trouble you with directions to a printer, at least till the summer is over. If I live to see the return of winter, I may perhaps assume it again; but my appetite for fame is not keen enough to combat with my love of fine weather, my love of indolence, and my love of gardening employments. I send you by Mr. Old my Works complete, bound in brown paper, and numbered according to the series in which I would have them published. With respect to the poem called Truth, it is so true that it can hardly fail of giving offence to an unenlightened reader. I think, therefore, that in order to obviate in some measure those prejudices that will naturally erect their bristles against it, an explanatory preface, such as you (and nobody so well as you) can furnish me with, will have every grace of propriety to recommend it. Or, if you are not averse to the task, and your avocations will allow you to undertake it, and if you think it would still be more proper, I should be glad to be indebted to you for the preface to the whole. I wish you, however, to consult your own judgement upon the occasion, and to engage in either of these works, or neither, just as your discretion guides you. The observations contained in the Progress of Error, though, as you say, of general application, have yet such an unlucky squint at the author of Thelyphthora, that they will be almost as sure to strike him in the sore place, as he will be to read the poem, if published with my name; and I would by no means wish to involve you in the resentment that I shall probably incur by those lines; which might be the consequence of our walking arm in arm into the public notice. For my own part I have my answer ready, if I should be called upon; but as you have corresponded with him upon the subject, and have closed that correspondence in as amicable a way as the subject of it would permit, you may perhaps think it would appear like a departure from the friendly moderation of your conduct, to give an open countenance and encouragement to a work in which he seems to be so freely treated. But after all there is no necessity for your name, though I should choose by all means to be honoured with it, if there be no unanswerable objection.-You will find the substituted passage in the Progress of Error, just where the ground was occupied by the reflections upon Mr. Madan's performance. Mr. Hill's answer seems to have no fault but what it owes to a virtue. His great charity and candour have in my mind excluded from it that animation and energy, which even a good man might lawfully show when answering a book which could hardly fail to excite a little indignation. Mildness and meekness are not more plainly recommended in Scripture in some instances, than sharpness of reproof and severity in others. I am very well satisfied with the commendation the |