should pass, they are undone. We lately sent a petition from hence to Lord Dartmouth; I signed it, and am sure the contents are true. The purport of it was to inform him that there are very near one thousand two hundred lace-makers in this beggarly town, the most of whom had reason enough, while the bill was in agitation, to look upon every loaf they bought as the last they should ever be able to earn. I can never think it good policy to incur the certain inconvenience of ruining thirty thousand, in order to prevent a remote and possible damage though to a much greater number. The measure is like a scythe, and the poor lace-makers are the sickly crop that trembles before the edge of it. The prospect of peace with America is like the streak of dawn in their horizon; but this bill is like a black cloud behind it, that threatens their hope of a comfortable day with utter extinction. I did not perceive till this moment, that I had tacked two similes together; a. practice which, though warranted by the example of Homer, and allowable in an epic poem, is rather luxuriant and licentious in a letter : lest I should add another, I conclude. W. C. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. July 11, 1780. I HAVE no oracular responses to make you upon the subject of gardening, while I know that you have both Miller and Mawe in your possession; to them I refer you, but especially to the latter, because it will be little or no trouble to consult him. I have heard that if the first crop of roses are cut off as fast as the buds appear, a second will be produced in autumn. I do not know it to be true; but the fact is easily ascertained, and I recommend it to Miss Shuttleworth to make the experiment with her scissors. I account myself sufficiently commended for my Latin exercise, by the number of translations it has undergone. That which you distinguished in the margin by the word "better," was the production of a friend; and, except that for a modest reason he omitted the third couplet, I think it is a good one. To finish the group, I have translated it myself; and though I would not wish you to give it to the world, for more reasons than one, especially lest some French hero should call me to an account for it, I add it on the other side. An author ought to be the best judge of his own meaning; and, whether I have succeeded or not, I cannot but wish, that where a translator is wanted, the writer was always to be his own. False, cruel, disappointed, stung to the heart, I have often wondered that Dryden's illustrious epigram on Milton (in my mind the second best that ever was made) has never been translated into Latin, for the admiration of the learned in other countries. I have at last presumed to venture upon the task myself. The great closeness of the original, which is equal in that respect to the most compact Latin I ever saw, made it extremely difficult. Tres, tria, sed longe distantia sæcula, Vates I have not one bright thought upon the chancellor's recovery; nor can I strike off so much as one sparkling atom from that brilliant subject. It is not when I will, nor upon what I will, but as a thought happens to occur to me; and then I versify, whether I will or not. I never write but for my amusement; and what I write is sure to answer that end, if it answers no other. If, besides this purpose, the more desirable one of entertaining you be effected, I then receive double fruit of my labour, and consider this produce of it as a second crop, the more valuable, because less expected. But when I have once remitted a composition to you, I have done with it. It is pretty certain that I shall never read it or think of it again. From that moment I have constituted you sole judge of its accomplishments, if it has any, and of its defects, which it is sure to have. For this reason I decline answering the question with which you concluded your last, and cannot persuade myself to enter into a critical examen of the two pieces upon Lord Mansfield's loss, either with respect to their intrinsic or comparative merit; and indeed after having rather discouraged that use of them which you had designed, there is no occasion for it. I understand, though I have not seen it, that the author of Thelypthora establishes many of his premises upon his own peculiar interpretation of the original Hebrew. I am therefore absolutely incompetent to decide the question whether he has Scripture on his side or not, and have no more curiosity to see his book than I should have if it were written in that language. If I had a wife of whom I was weary, and wished to be indulged with the liberty of taking another, I would certainly read it, and study it too. I should be encouraged in this undertaking, by a hope that passion, prejudice, and appetite combining together with the author's ingenuity to impose upon me, might succeed, and release me from the rusty and old fashioned bonds of fidelity, friendship, and love. But I have no interest in the question, at least no other interest than that of every man who wishes well to his country, and would be sorry to see the honest and faithful English husband converted into a Turkish stallion, and the amiable character of the English wife, the most amiable in the world, degraded into the sordid and base condition of a brood mare. W. C. TO MRS. COWPER, PARK STREET, GROSVENOR MY DEAR COUSIN, SQUARE. July 20, 1780. MR. NEWTON having desired me to be of the party, I am come to meet him. You see me sixteen years older, at the least, than when I saw you last; but the effects of time seem to have taken place rather on the outside of my head than within it. What was brown is become gray, but what was foolish remains foolish still. Green fruit must rot before it ripens, if the season is such as to afford it nothing but cold winds and dark clouds, that interrupt every ray of sunshine. My days steal away silently, and march on (as poor mad King Lear would have made his soldiers march) as if they were shod with felt; not so silently but that I hear them; yet were it not that I am always listening to their flight, having no infirmity that I had not when I was much younger, I should deceive myself with an imagination that I am still young. I am fond of writing as an amusement, but do not always find it one. Being rather scantily furnished with subjects that are good for any thing, and corresponding only with those who have no relish for such as are good for nothing, I often find myself reduced to the necessity, the disagreeable necessity, of writing about myself. This does not mend the matter much; for though in a description of my own condition, I discover abundant materials to employ my pen upon, yet as the task is not very agreeable to me, so I am sufficiently aware that it is likely to prove irksome to others. A painter who should confine himself in the exercise of his art to the drawing of his own picture, |