so do we both, and will not suffer you to postpone your visit for any such consideration. No, my dear boy! in the affair of subscriptions we are already illustrious enough; shall be so at least when you shall have enlisted a college or two more; which, perhaps, you may be able to do in the course of the ensuing week. I feel myself much obliged to your university, and much disposed to admire the liberality of spirit they have shown on this occasion. Certainly I had not deserved much favour of their hands, all things considered. But the cause of literature seems to have some weight with them, and to have superseded the resentment they might be supposed to entertain on the score of certain censures that you wot of. It is not so at Oxford. W. C. CCCXLIX.-To SAMUEL ROSE, Esq. MY DEAR FRIEND, April 29, 1787. I forgot if I told you that Mr. Throckmorton had applied, through the medium of — to the university of Oxford. He did so, but without success. Their answer was, that "They subscribe to nothing." Pope's subscriptions did not amount, I think, to six hundred; and mine will not fall very short of five. Noble doings, at a time of day when Homer has no news to tell us, and when all other comforts of life having risen in price, poetry has of course fallen. I call it a "comfort of life:" it is so to others, but to myself it is become even a necessary. These holiday times are very unfavourable to the printer's progress. He and all his demons are making themselves merry, and me sad, for I mourn at every hindrance. W. C. CCCL. TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT. MY DEAR FRIEND, Weston, May 2, 1791. Monday being a day in which Homer has now no demands upon me, I shall give part of the present Monday to you. But it this moment occurs to me that the proposition with which I begin will be obscure to you unless followed by an explanation. You are to understand, therefore, that Monday being no post-day, I have consequently no proof-sheets to correct, the correction of which is nearly all that I have to do with Homer at present; I say nearly all, because I am likewise occasionally employed in reading over the whole of what is already printed, that I may make a table of errata to each of the poems. How much is already printed say you?—I answer-the whole Iliad, and almost seventeen books of the Odyssey. About a fortnight since, perhaps three weeks, I had a visit from your nephew, Mr. Bagot, and his tutor, Mr. Hurlock, who came hither under conduct of your niece, Miss Barbara. So were the friends of Ulysses conducted to the palace of Antiphates, the Læstrigonian, by that monarch's daughter. But mine is no palace, neither am I a giant, neither did I devour any one of the party-on the contrary, I gave them chocolate, and permitted them to depart in peace. I was much pleased both with the young man and his tutor. In the countenance of the former I saw much Bagotism, and not less in his manners. I will leave you to guess what I mean by that expression. Physiognomy is a study of which I have almost as high an opinion as Lavater himself, the professor of it, and for this good reason, because it never yet deceived me. But perhaps I shall speak more truly if I say that I am somewhat of an adept in the art, although I have never studied it; for, whether I will or not, I judge of have never say, human creature by the countenance, and, as every yet seen reason to repent of my judgment. Sometimes I feel myself powerfully attracted, as I was by your nephew, and sometimes with equal vehemence repulsed, which attraction and repulsion have always been justified in the sequel. I I have lately read, and with more attention than I ever gave to them before, Milton's Latin poems. But these I must make the subject of some future letter, in which it will be ten to one that your friend Samuel Johnson gets another slap or two at the hands of your humble servant. Pray read them yourself, and with as much attention as I did; then read the Doctor's remarks if you have them, and then tell me what you think of both. It will be pretty sport for you on such a day as this, which is the fourth that we have had of almost incessant rain. The weather, and a cold, the effect of it, have confined me ever since last Thursday. Mrs. Unwin, however, is well, and joins me in every good wish to yourself and family. I am, my good friend, Most truly yours, CCCLI.-To LADY HESKETH. W. C. MY DEAREST Coz, The Lodge, May 18, 1791. Has another of thy letters fallen short of its destination; or wherefore is it that thou writest not? One letter in five weeks is a poor allowance for your friends at Weston. One that I received two or three days since from Mrs. Frog has not at all enlightened me on this head. But I wander in a wilderness of vain conjecture. I have had a letter lately from New York, from a Dr. Cogswell of that place, to thank me for my fine verses, and to tell me, which pleased me particularly, that after having read the Task,' my first volume fell into his hands, which he read also, and was equally pleased with. This is the only instance I can recollect of a reader who has done justice to my first effusions; for I am sure that in point of expression they do not fall a jot below my second, and that in point of subject they are for the most part superior. But enough, and too much of this. The Task,' he tells me, has been reprinted in that city. Adieu! my dearest Coz. We have blooming scenes under wintry skies, and with icy blasts to fan them. CCCLII.-To JOHN JOHNSON, Esq. MY DEAREST Johnny, Weston, May 23, 1791. Did I not know that you are never more in your element than when you are exerting yourself in my cause, I should congratulate you on the hope there seems to be that your labour will soon have an end. You will wonder, perhaps, my Johnny, that Mrs. Unwin, by my desire, enjoined you to secrecy concerning the translation of the Frogs and Mice. Wonderful it may well seem to you that I should wish to hide for a short time from a few, what I am just going to publish to all. But I had more reasons than one for this mysterious management; that is to say, I had two. In the first place, I wished to surprise my readers agreeably; and secondly, I wished to allow none of my friends an opportunity to object to the measure, who might think it, perhaps, a measure more bountiful than prudent. But I have had my sufficient reward, though not a pecuniary one. It is a poem of much humour, and accordingly I found the translation of it very amusing. It struck me, too, that I must either make it part of the present publication, or never publish it at all; it would have been so terribly out of its place in any other volume. I long for the time that shall bring you once more to Weston, and all your et ceteras with you. O what a month of May has this been! Let never poet, English poet at least, give himself to the praises of May again. THE JUDGMENT OF THE POETS. Two nymphs, both nearly of an age, The worth of each had been complete, But one, although her smile was sweet, And in her humour, when she frown'd, The other was of gentler cast, From all such frenzy clear; Her frowns were seldom known to last, W. C. To poets of renown in song The nymphs referr'd the cause, They gentle call'd, and kind, and soft, And though she changed her mood so oft, No judges sure were e'er so mad, Or so resolved to err ! In short, the charms her sister had Then thus the god, whom fondly they Was heard, one genial summer's day, "Since thus ye have combined," he said, The Lodge, May 27, 1791. MY DEAREST Coz, I, who am neither dead, nor sick, nor idle, should have no 'excuse, were I as tardy in answering as you in writing. I live, indeed, where leisure abounds, and you, where leisure is not; a difference that accounts sufficiently both for your silence and my loquacity. When you told Mrs. that my Homer would come forth in May, you told her what you believed, and therefore no falsehood. But you told her at the same what will not happen, and therefore not a truth. There is a medium between truth and falsehood; and, I believe, the word mistake expresses it exactly. I will therefore say that you were mistaken. If instead of May you had mentioned June, I flatter myself that you would have hit the mark. For in June there is every probability that we shall publish. You will say, Hang the printer!-for it is his fault!" But stay, my dear, hang him not just now! For to execute him and find another will cost us time, and so much too, that I question if, in that case, we should publish sooner than in August. To say truth, I am not perfectly sure that there will be any necessity to hang him at all: though that is a matter which I desire to leave entirely at your discretion, alleging only in the mean time, that the man does not appear to me during the last half-year to have been at all in fault. His remittance of sheets in all that time has been punctual, save and except while the Easter holidays lasted, when, I suppose, he found it impossible to keep his devils to their business. I shall, however, 66 receive the last sheet of the Odyssey to-morrow, and have already sent up the preface, together with all the needful. You see, therefore, that the publication of this famous work cannot be delayed much longer. As for politics, I reck not, having no room in my head for any thing but the Slave-bill. That is lost; and all the rest is a trifle. I have not seen Paine's book, but refused to see it when it was offered to me. No man shall convince me that I am improperly governed, while I feel the contrary. Adieu! CCCLIV.-To SAMUEL ROSE, Esq. MY DEAR FRIEND, W. C. 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, goodnatured, and gentle, just what I imagined her to be before I had seen her. |