I am going to take a last dinner with a most at forgetting what I have seen. But if I am right, agreeable family, who have been my only neigh-I can not help recommending the omitted passages bours ever since I have lived at Weston. On to your reconsideration. If the play were designed Monday they go to London, and in the summer for representation, I should be apt to think Cecito an estate in Oxfordshire, which is to be their lia's first speech rather too long, and should prefer home in future. The occasion is not at all a plea- to have it broken into dialogue, by an interposition sant one to me, nor does it leave me spirits to add more than that I am, dear sir, Most truly yours, W. C. TO JOHN JOHNSON, ESQ. now and then from one of her sisters. But since it is designed, as I understand, for the closet only, that objection scems of no importance; at no rate however would I expunge it; because it is both prettily imagined, and elegantly written. I have read your cursory remarks, and am much pleased both with the style and the argument. Whether the latter be new or not, I am not com MY DEAREST JOHNNY, Weston, March 11, 1792. You talk of primroses that you pulled on Can-petent to judge; if it be, you are entitled to much dlemas day; but what think you of me who heard praise for the invention of it. Where other data a nightingale on New Year's day? Perhaps I are wanting to ascertain the time when an author am the only man in England who can boast of of many pieces wrote each in particular, there can such good fortune; good indeed, for if it was at be no better criterion by which to determine the all an omen, it could not be an unfavourable one. point, than the more or less proficiency manifested The winter, however, is now making himself in the composition. Of this proficiency, where it amends, and seems the more peevish for having appears, and of those plays in which it appears been encroached on at so undue a season. Nothing less than a large slice out of the spring will satisfy him. Lady Hesketh left us yesterday. She intended indeed to have left us four days sooner; but in the evening before the day fixed for her departure, snow enough fell to occasion just so much delay of it. not, you seem to me to have judged well and truly; and consequently I approve of your arrangement. I attended, as you desired me, in reading the character of Cecilia, to the hint you gave me concerning your sister Sally, and give you joy of such a sister. This however not exclusively of the rest, for though they may not be all Cecilias, I have a strong persuasion that they are all very amiable. W. C. TO LADY HESKETH. We have faint hopes that in the month of May we shall see her again. I know that you have had a letter from her, and you will no doubt have the grace not to make her wait long for an answer. We expect Mr. Rose on Tuesday; but he stays with us only till the Saturday following. With MY DEAREST COz, The Lodge, March 25, 1792. him I shall have some conferences on the subject of Homer, respecting a new edition I mean, and some perhaps on the subject of Milton; on him I have not yet begun to comment, or even fix the time when I shall. Forget not your promised visit! W. C. TO THE REV. MR. HURDIS. MY DEAR SIR, Mr. ROSE's longer stay than he at first intended was the occasion of the longer delay of my answer to your date, as you may both have perceived by the date thereof, and learned from his information. It was a daily trouble to me to see it lying in the window seat, while I knew you were in expectation of its arrival. By this time I presume you have seen him, and have seen likewise Mr. Hayley's friendly letter and complimentary sonnet, as well as the letter of the honest Quaker; all of Weston, March 23, 1792. which, at least the two former, I shall be glad to I HAVE read your play carefully, and with great receive again at a fair opportunity. Mr. Hayley's pleasure; it seems now to be a performance that letter slept six weeks in Johnson's custody. It was can not fail to do you much credit. Yet, unless necessary I should answer it without delay, and my memory deceives me, the scene between Cecilia accordingly I answered it the very evening on and Heron in the garden has lost something that which I received it, giving him to understand, pleased me much when I saw it first; and I am among other things, how much vexation the booknot sure that you have not likewise obliterated an seller's folly had cost me, who had detained it so account of Sir Thomas's execution, that I found long; especially on account of the distress that I very pathetic. It would be strange if in these knew it must have occasioned to him also. From two particulars I should seem to miss what never existed; you will presently know whether I am as good at remembering what I never saw, as I am his reply, which the return of the post brought me, I learn that in the long interval of my noncorrespondence he had suffered anxiety and mortification enough; so much that I dare say he made twenty not for me? This was adding mortification to vows never to hazard again either letter or compli- disappointment, so that I often lost all patience. ment to an unknown author. What indeed could The suffrage of Dr. Robertson makes more he imagine less, than that I meant by such an ob- than amends for the scurvy jest passed upon me stinate silence to tell him that I valued neither by the wag unknown. I regard him not; nor, him nor his praises, nor his proffered friendship; except for about two moments after I first heard in short that I considered him as a rival, and of his doings, have I ever regarded him. I have therefore, like a true author, hated and despised somewhere a secret enemy; I know not for what him? He is now however convinced that I love cause he should be so, but he I imagine supposes him, as indeed I do, and I account him the chief that he has a cause; it is well however to have acquisition that my own verse has ever procured but one; and I will take all the care I can not to me. Brute should I be if I did not, for he promises increase the number. me every assistance in his power. I have begun my notes, and am playing the I have likewise a very pleasing letter from Mr. commentator manfully. The worst of it is that Park, which I wish you were here to read; and a I am anticipated in almost all my opportunities to very pleasing poem that came enclosed in it for shine by those who have gone before me. my revisal, written when he was only twenty years of age, yet wonderfully well written, though wanting some correction. To Mr. Hurdis I return Sir Thomas More tomorrow; having revised it a second time. He is now a very respectable figure, and will do my friend, who gives him to the public this spring, considerable credit. W. C. TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, W. C. ESQ. MY DEAR FRIEND, Weston, April 6, 1792. GOD grant that this friendship of ours may be a comfort to us all the rest of our days, in a world where true friendships are rarities, and especially where suddenly formed they are apt soon to terminate! But as I said before, I feel a disposition of heart toward you that I never felt for one whom I had never seen; and that shall prove itself I trust in the event a propitious omen. MY DEAR FRIEND, March 30, 1792. My mornings, ever since you went, have been given to my correspondents; this morning I have already written a long letter to Mr. Park, giving my opinion of his poem, which is a favourable one. it amiss perhaps, for I have a terrible memory, I forget whether I showed it to you when you were here, and even whether I had then received it. He has genius and delicate taste; and if he 'were not an engraver might be one of our first hands in poetry. TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. W. C. Weston, April 5, 1792. You talk, my dear friend, as John Bunyan says, like one that has the egg-shell still upon his head. You talk of the mighty favours that you have received from me, and forget entirely those for which I am indebted to you; but though you forget them, I shall not, nor ever think that I have requited you, so long as any opportunity presents itself of rendering you the smallest service; small indeed is all that I can ever hope to render. Horace says somewhere, though I may quote Utrumque nostrum incredibili modo **** Our stars consent, at least have had an in- It gives me the sincerest pleasure that I may hope to see you at Weston; for as to any migrations of mine, they must, I fear, notwithstanding the joy I should feel in being a guest of yours, be still considered in the light of impossibilities. Come then, my friend, and be as welcome, as the country people say here, as the flowers in May! I am happy, as I say, in the expectation, but the fear, or rather the consciousness that I shall not answer on a nearer view, makes it a trembling kind of happiness, and a doubtful. After the privacy which I have mentioned above, I went to Huntingdon; soon after my arYou now perceive, and sensibly, that not with- rival there, I took up my quarters at the house of out reason I complained as I used to do of those the Rev. Mr. Unwin: I lived with him while he tiresome rogues the printers. Bless yourself that lived, and ever since his death have lived with his you have not two thick quartos to bring forth as widow. Her, therefore, you will find mistress of I had. My vexation was always much increased the house; and I judge of you amiss, or you will by this reflection; they are every day, and all day find her just such as you would wish. To me long, employed in printing for somebody, and why she has been often a nurse, and invariably the kindest friend, through a thousand adversities to Calchas, for I do remember that you have not that I have had to grapple with in the course of yet furnished me with the secret history of him almost thirty years. I thought it better to intro- and his family, which I demanded from you. duce her to you thus, than to present her to you Adieu. Yours, most sincerely, W. C. at your coming quite a stranger. Bring with you any books that you think may I rejoice that you are so well with the learned be useful to my commentatorship, for with you Bishop of Sarum, and well remember how he ferfor an interpreter I shall be afraid of none of reted the vermin Lauder out of all his hidings, them. And in truth, if you think that you shall when I was a boy at Westminster. want them, you must bring books for your own I have not yet studied with your last remarks use also, for they are an article with which I am before me, but hope soon to find an opportunity. heinously unprovided; being much in the condition of the man whose library Pope describes as No mighty store! His own works neatly bound, and little more! You shall know how this has come to pass hereafter. TO LADY THROCKMORTON. MY DEAR LADY FROG, Weston, April 16, 1792. I THANK you for your letter, as sweet as it was Tell me, my friend, are your letters in your own short, and as sweet as good news could make it. handwriting; if so, I am in pain for your eyes, lest You encourage a hope that has made me happy by such frequent demands upon them I should ever since I have entertained it. And if my wishhurt them. I had rather write you three letters, for es can hasten the event, it will not be long susone, much as I prize your letters, than that should pended. As to your jealousy, I mind it, not, or happen. And now, for the present, adieu-I am only to be pleased with it; I shall say no more on going to accompany Milton into the lake of fire the subject at present than this, that of all ladies and brimstone, having just begun my annotations. living, a certain lady, whom I need not name, would be the lady of my choice for a certain gentleman, were the whole sex submitted to my election. W. C. TO THE REV. MR. HURDIS. MY DEAR SIR Weston, April 8, 1792. What a delightful anecdote is that which you tell me of a young lady detected in the very act of stealing our Catharina's praises; is it posYour entertaining and pleasant letter, resemble that she can survive the shame, the mortificabling in that respect all that I receive from you, tion of such a discovery! Can she ever see the deserved a more expeditious answer; and should same company again, or any company that she can have had what it so well deserved, had it not suppose by the remotest probability, may have reached me at a time when deeply in debt to heard the tidings? If she can, she must have an all my correspondents, I had letters to write with- assurance equal to her vanity. A lady in Lonout number. Like autumnal leaves that strew don stole my song on the broken Rose, or rather the brooks in Vallambrosa, the unanswered far- would have stolen, and have passed it for her own. rago lay before me. If I quote at all, you must expect me henceforth to quote none but Milton, since for a long time to come I shall be occupied with him only. But she too was unfortunate in her attempt; for there happened to be a female cousin of mine in company, who knew that I had written it. It is very flattering to a poet's pride, that the ladies I was much pleased with the extract you gave should thus hazard every thing for the sake of apme from your sister Eliza's letter; she writes very propriating his verses. I may say with Milton, elegantly, and (if I might say it without seeming that I am fallen on evil tongues, and evil days, to flatter you) I should say much in the manner of her brother. It is well for your sister Sally, that gloomy Dis is already a married man; else perhaps finding her, as he found Proserpine, studying botany in the fields, he might transport her to his own flowerless abode, where all her hopes of improvement in that science would be at an end for ever. being not only plundered of that which belongs to me, but being charged with that which does not. Thus it seems (and I have learned it from more quarters than one) that a report is, and has been some time current in this and the neighbouring counties, that though I have given myself the air of declaiming against the Slave Trade in the Task, I am in reality a friend to it; and last night What letter of the tenth of December is that I received a letter from Joe Rye, to inform me which you say you have not answered? Consider that I have been much traduced and calumniated it is April now, and I never remember any thing on this account. Not knowing how I could better that I write half so long. But perhaps it relates or more effectually refute the scandal, I have this morning sent a copy to the Northampton paper, the negroes, multiplying at a prodigious rate, were Mrs. G and her little ones are gone, TO THE REV. J. JEKYLL RYE. MY DEAR SIR, Weston, April 16, 1792. Thus stands the matter. You will do me the justice, I dare, say, to speak of me as a man who abhors the commerce, which is now I hope in a fair way to be abolished, as often as you shall find occasion. And I beg you henceforth to do yourself the justice to believe it impossible, that I should for a moment suspect you of duplicity or misrepresentation. I have been grossly slandered, but neither by you, nor in consequence of any thing that you have either said or written. I remain therefore, still as heretofore, with great respect, Much and truly yours, W. C Mrs. Unwin's compliments attend you. TO LADY HESKETH. If any man concludes, because I allow myself the use of sugar and rum, that therefore I am a Weston, May 5, 1792. friend to the Slave Trade, he concludes rashly, I REJOICE, as thou reasonably supposest me to and does me great wrong; for the man lives not do, in the matrimonial news communicated in your who abhors it more than I do. My reasons for last. Not that it was altogether news to me, for my own practice are satisfactory to myself, and twice I had received broad hints of it from Lady they whose practice is contrary, are, I suppose, Frog by letter, and several times virà voce while satisfied with theirs. So far is good. Let every she was here. But she enjoined me secrecy as man act according to his own judgment and con- well as you, and you know that all secrets are science; but if we condemn another for not seeing safe with me safer far than the winds in the bags with our eyes, we are unreasonable; and if we of Æolus. I know not in fact the lady whom it reproach him on that account, we are uncharita- would give me more pleasure to call Mrs. Courteble, which is a still greater evil. nay than the lady in question; partly because I I had heard, before I received the favour of know her, but especially because I know her to yours, that such a report of me, as you mention, be all that I can wish in a neighbour. had spread about the country. But my informant I have often observed that there is a regular altold me that it was founded thus: The people of ternation of good and evil in the lot of men, so Olney petitioned Parliament for the abolition-my that a favourable incident may be considered as name was sought among the subscribers, but was the harbinger of an unfavourable one, and vice not found-a question was asked, how that hap-versa. Dr. Madan's experience witnesses to the pened? Answer was made, that I had once in- truth of this observation. One day he gets a deed been an enemy to the Slave Trade, but had broken head, and next a mitre to heal it. I rechanged my mind; for that lately having read a joice that he has met with so effectual a cure, history or an account of Africa, I had seen it there though my joy is not unmingled with concern: for asserted, that till the commencement of that traffic till now I had some hope of seeing him, but since 1 I live in the North, and his episcopal call is in the sooner after June the better; till then we shall the West, that is a gratification I suppose which have company. I must no longer look for. I forgot not my debts to your dear sister, and My sonnet, which I sent you, was printed in your aunts Balls. Greet them both with a brother's the Northampton paper last week, and this week kiss, and place it to my account. I will write to it produced me a complimentary one in the same them when Milton and a thousand other engagepaper, which served to convince me at least by ments will give me leave. Mr. Hayley is here on the matter of it, that my own was not published a visit. We have formed a friendship that I trust without occasion, and that it had answered its will last for life, and render us an edifying exampurpose. ple to all future poets. Adieu! Lose no time in coming after the time mentioned. W. C. My correspondence with Hayley proceeds briskly, and is very affectionate on both sides. I expect him here in about a fortnight, and wish heartily, with Mrs. Unwin, that you would give him a meeting. I have promised him indeed that he shall find us alone, but you are one of the family. I wish much to print the following lines in one of the daily papers. Lord S's vindication of the I WISH with all my heart, my dearest Coz, poor culprit in the affair of Cheit-Sing has con- that I had not ill news for the subject of the firmed me in the belief that he has been injurious- present letter. My friend, my Mary, has again ly treated, and I think it an act merely of justice to take a little notice of him. ΤΟ WARREN HASTINGS, ESQ. BY AN OLD SCHOOLFELLOW OF HIS AT WESTMINSTER. If thou wilt take the pains to send them to thy news-monger, I hope thou wilt do well. Adieu! W. C. TO JOHN JOHNSON, ESQ. TO LADY HESKETH. been attacked by the same disorder that threatened me last year with the loss of her, and of which you were yourself a witness. Gregson would not allow that first stroke to be paralytic, but this he acknowledges to be so; and with respect to the former, I never had myself any doubt that it was; but this has been much the severest. Her speech has been almost unintelligible from the moment that she was struck; it is with difficulty that she opens her eyes, and she can not keep them open; the muscles necessary to the purpose being contracted; and as to self-moving powers, from place to place, and the use of her right hand and arm, she has entirely lost them. It has happened well, that of all men living the man most qualified to assist and comfort me is here, though till within these few days I never saw him, and a few weeks since had no expectation that I ever should. You have already guessed that I mean Hayley. Hayley who loves me as if he had known me from my cradle. When he returns to town, as he must, alas! too soon, he to you. will pay his respects Weston, May 20, 1792. MY DEAREST OF ALL JOHNNIES, I AM not sorry that your ordination is postponed. A year's learning and wisdom, added to I will not conclude without adding that our poor your present stock, will not be more than enough patient is beginning, I hope, to recover from this to satisfy the demands of your function. Neither stroke also; but her amendment is slow, as must am I sorry that you find it difficult to fix your be expected at her time of life and in such a disthoughts to the serious point at all times. It proves order. I am as well myself as you have ever at least that you attempt, and wish to do it, and known me in a time of much trouble, and even these are good symptoms. Woe to those who en-better. ter on the ministry of the Gospel without having It was not possible to prevail on Mrs. Unwin previously asked at least from God a mind and to let me send for Dr. Kerr, but Hayley has writspirit suited to their occupation, and whose expe- ten to his friend Dr. Austin a representation of rience never differs from itself, because they are her case, and we expect his opinion and advice always alike vain, light, and inconsiderate. It is to-morrow. In the mean time, we have borrowed therefore matter of great joy to me to hear you an electrical machine from our neighbour Socket, complain of levity, and such it is to Mrs. Un- the effect of which she tried yesterday, and the win. She is, I thank God, tolerably well, and day before, and we think it has been of material loves you. As to the time of your journey hither, service. |