that odes were no longer required, and that the salary was increased, I felt not the same dislike of it. But I could neither go to court, nor could I kiss hands, were it for a much more valuable consideration. Therefore never expect to hear that royal favours find out me! Adieu, my dear old friend! I will send you a mortuary copy soon, and in the mean time remain, Ever yours, CCCXXXIV.-To JOHN JOHNSON, Esq. W. C. Weston, Dec. 18, 1790. I perceive myself so flattered by the instances of illustrious success mentioned in your letter, that I feel all the amiable modesty, for which I was once so famous, sensibly giving way to a spirit of vain glory. The King's College subscription makes me proud-the effect that my verses have had on your two young friends, the mathematicians, makes me proud; and I am, if possible, prouder still of the contents of the letter that you enclosed. You complained of being stupid, and sent me one of the cleverest letters. I have not complained of being stupid, and sent you one of the dullest. But it is no matter, I never aim at any thing above the pitch of every day's scribble when I write to those I love. Homer proceeds, my boy! We shall get through it in time, and, I hope, by the time appointed. We are now in the tenth Iliad. I expect the ladies every minute to breakfast. You have their best love. Mine attends the whole army of Donnes at Mattishall Green assembled. How happy should I find myself were I but one of the party! My capering days are over. But do you caper for me, that you may give them some idea of the happiness I should feel were I in the midst of them! W. C. CCCXXXV.-TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT. MY DEAR FRIEND, Weston, Jun. 4, 1791. You would long since have received an answer to your last, had not the wicked clerk of Northampton delayed to send me the printed copy of my annual dirge, which I waited to enclose. Here it is at last, and much good may it do the readers! I have regretted that I could not write sooner, especially because it well became me to reply as soon as possible to your kind inquiries after my health, which has been both better and worse since I wrote last. The cough was cured, or nearly so, when I received your letter, but I have lately been afflicted with a nervous fever, a malady formidable to me above all others, on account of the terror and dejection of spirits that in my case always accompany it. I even looked forward, for this reason, to the month now current, with the most miserable apprehensions; for in this month the distemper has twice seized me. I wish to be thankful, however, to the Sovereign Dispenser both of health and sickness, that though I have felt cause enough to tremble, he gives me now encouragement to hope that I may dismiss my fears, and expect, for this January at least, to escape it. The mention of quantity reminds me of a remark that I have seen somewhere, possibly in Johnson, to this purport,-that the syllables in our language being neither long nor short, our verse accordingly is less beautiful than the verse of the Greeks or Romans, because requiring less artifice in its construction. But I deny the fact, and am ready to depose on oath that I find every syllable as distinguishable and clearly either long or short in our language as in any other. I know, also, that without an attention to the quantity of our syllables, good verse cannot possibly be written; and that ignorance of this matter is one reason why we see so much that is good for nothing. The movement of a verse is always either shuffling or graceful, according to our management in this particular; and Milton gives almost as many proofs of it in his Paradise Lost' as there are lines in the poem. Away, therefore, with all such unfounded observations! I would not give a farthing for many bushels of them-nor you perhaps for this letter. Yet, upon recollection, for as much as I know you to be a dear lover of literary gossip, I think it possible you may esteem it highly. Believe me, my dear friend, most truly yours, CCCXXXVI.-To JOHN JOHNSON, Esq. W. C. Weston, Jan. 21, 1791. I know that you have already been catechised by Lady Hesketh on the subject of your return hither before the winter shall be over, and shall therefore only say, that if you CAN COME, we shall be happy to receive you. Remember, also, that nothing can excuse the non-performance of a promise, but absolute necessity! Were you not extremely pleasant to us, and just the sort of youth that suits us, we should neither of us have said half so much, or, perhaps, a word on the subject. Yours, my dear Johnny, are vagaries that I shall never see practised by any other; and, whether you slap your ancle, or reel as if you were fuddled, or dance in the path before me, all is characteristic of yourself, and therefore to me delightful. I have hinted to you indeed, sometimes, that you should be cautious of indulging antic habits and singularities of all sorts, and young men in general have need enough of such admonition. But yours are a sort of fairy habits, such as might belong to Puck or Robin Goodfellow, and therefore, good as the advice is, I should be half sorry should you take it. This allowance, at least, I give you. Continue to take your walks, if walks they may be called, exactly in their present fashion, till you have taken orders! Then, indeed, forasmuch as a skipping, curvetting, bounding divine might be a spectacle not altogether seemly, I shall consent to your adoption of a more grave demeanor. W. C. CCCXXXVII.-To SAMUEL ROSE, Esq. MY DEAR FRIEND, like The Lodge, Feb. 5, 1791. My letters to you are all either petitionary, or in the style of acknowledgments and thanks, and such nearly in an alternate order. In my last, I loaded you with commissions, for the due discharge of which I am now to say, and 'say truly, how much I feel myself obliged to you; neither can I stop there, but must thank you wise for new honours from Scotland, which have left me nothing to wish for from that country; for my list is now, I believe, graced with the subscription of all its learned bodies, I regret only that some of them arrived too late to do honour to my present publication of names. But there are those among them, and from Scotland too, that may give a useful hint perhaps to our universities. Your very handsome present of Pope's Homer' has arrived safe, notwithstanding an accident that befell him by the way. The Hall-servant brought the parcel from Olney, resting it on the pommel of the saddle, and his horse fell with him. Pope was in consequence rolled in the dirt, but being well coated, got no damage. If augers and soothsayers were not out of fashion, I should have consulted one or two of that order, in hope of learning from them that this fall was ominous. I have found a place for him in the parlour, where he makes a splendid appearance, and where he shall not long want a neighbour, one, who if less popular than himself, shall at least look as big as he. How has it happened, that since Pope did certainly dedicate both Iliad' and 'Odyssey,' no dedication is found in this first edition of them? W. C. CCCXXXVIII.-To LADY HESKETH. Feb. 13, 1791. I now send you a full and true account of this business. Having learned that your inn at Woburn was the George, we sent Samuel thither yesterday. Mr. Martin, master of the George, told him * * * * ** P.S. I cannot help adding a circumstance* that will divert you. Martin having learned of Sam whose servant he was, told him, that he had never seen Mr. Cowper, but he had heard him frequently spoken of by the companies that had called at his house, and therefore, when Sam would have paid for his breakfast, would take nothing from him. Who says that fame is only empty breath? On the contrary, it is good ale, and cold beef into the bargain. CCCXXXIX.-TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT. MY DEAR FRIEND, Weston-Underwood, Feb. 26, 1791. Ir is a maxim of much weight, But notwithstanding the truth and importance of this apophthegm, to which I lay claim as the original author of it, it is not equally true that my application to Homer, close as it is, has been the sole cause of my delay to answer you. No; in observing so long a silence I have been influenced much more by a vindictive purpose, a purpose to punish you for your suspicion that I could possibly feel myself hurt or offended by any critical suggestion of yours, that seemed to reflect on the purity of my nonsense verses. Understand, if you please, for the future, that whether I disport myself in Greek or Latin, or in whatsoever other language, you are hereby, henceforth, and for ever, entitled and warranted to take any liberties with it to which you shall feel yourself inclined, not excepting even the lines themselves which stand at the head of this letter? You delight me when you call blank verse the English heroic; for I have always thought, and often said, that we have no other verse worthy to be so entitled. When you read my preface you will be made acquainted with my sentiments on this subject pretty much at large, for which reason I will curb my zeal, and say the less about it at present. That Johnson, who wrote harmoniously in rhyme, should have had so defective an ear as never to have discovered music at all in blank verse, till he heard a particular friend of his reading it, is a wonder never sufficiently to be wondered at. Yet this is true on his own acknowledgment, and amounts to a plain confession (of which perhaps he was not aware when he made it) *Note by the Editor. any This letter contained the history of a servant's cruelty to a post-horse, which a reader of humanity could not wish to see in print. But the postscript describes so pleasantly the signal influence of a poet's reputation on the spirit of a liberal innkeeper, that it surely ought not to be suppressed. that he did not know how to read blank verse himself. In short, he either suffered prejudice to lead him in a string whithersoever it would, or his taste in poetry was worth little. I don't believe he ever read any thing of that kind with enthusiasm in his life; and as good poetry cannot be composed without a considerable share of that quality in the mind of the author, so neither can it be read or tasted as it ought to be without it. I have said all this in the morning fasting, but am soon going to my tea. When, therefore, I shall have told you, that we are now, in the course of our printing, in the second book of the Odyssey, I shall only have time to add that I am, my dear friend, most truly yours, W. C. I think your Latin quotations very applicable to the present state of France. But France is in a situation new and untried before. CCCXL.-To JOHN JOHNSON, Esq. Feb. 27, 1791. Now, my dearest Johnny, I must tell thee in a few words how much I love and am obliged to thee for thy affectionate services. My Cambridge honours are all to be ascribed to you, and to you only. Yet you are but a little man; and a little man into the bargain, who have kicked the mathematics, their idol, out of your study. So important are the endings, which Providence frequently connects with small beginnings. Had you been here, I could have furnished you with much employment: for I have so dealt with your fair MS. in the course of my polishing and improving, that I have almost blotted out the whole. Such, however, as it is, I must now send it to the printer, and he must be content with it, for there is not time to make a fresh copy. We are now printing the second book of the Odyssey. Should the Oxonians bestow none of their notice on me on this occasion, it will happen singularly enough, that as Pope received his university honours in the subscription way from Oxford, and none at all from Cambridge, so I shall have received all mine from Cambridge, and none from Oxford. This is the more likely to be the case, because I understand, that on whatsoever occasion either of those learned bodies think fit to move, the other always makes it a point to sit still, thus proving its superiority. I shall send up your letter to Lady Hesketh in a day or two, knowing that the intelligence contained in it will afford her the greatest pleasure. Know, likewise, for your own gratification, that all the Scotch universities have subscribed, none excepted. We are all as well as usual; that is to say, as well as reasonable folks expect to be on the crazy side of this frail existence. I rejoice that we shall so soon have you again at our fireside. |