TO LADY HESKETH. The Lodge, Aug. 30, 1787. I write but little, because writing is become new to me; but I shall come on by degrees. Mrs. Unwin begs to be affectionately remembered to you. She is in tolerable health, which is the chief comfort here that I have to boast of. Yours, my dearest cousin, as ever, W. C. MY DEAREST COUSIN, TO LADY HESKETH. The Lodge, Sept. 4, 1787. My health and spirits seem to be mending daily. COME when thou canst come, secure of being To what end I know not, neither will conjecture, always welcome! All that is here is thine, tobut endeavour, as far as I can, to be content that gether with the hearts of those who dwell here. I they do so. I use exercise, and take the air in am only sorry, that your journey hither is necessathe park and wilderness. I read much, but as yet rily postponed beyond the time when I did hope write not. Our friends at the Hall make them- to have seen you; sorry too that my uncle's inselves more and more amiable in our account, firmities are the occasion of it. But years will by treating us rather as old friends, than as friends have their course, and their effect: they are hap newly acquired. There are few days in which piest, so far as this life is concerned, who like him we do not meet, and I am now almost as much escape those effects the longest, and who do not at home in their house as in our own. Mr. grow old before their time. Trouble and anguish Throckmorton, having long since put me in pos- do that for some, which only longevity does for session of all his ground, has now given me posses- others. A few months since I was older than sion of his library; an acquisition of great value your father is now, and though I have lately reto me, who never have been able to live without covered, as Falstaff says, some smatch of my books, since I first knew my letters, and who have youth, I have but little confidence, in truth none, no books of my own. By his means I have been in so flattering a change, but expect, when I least so well supplied that I have not yet even looked expect it, to wither again. The past is a pledge at the Lounger, for which however I do not for- for the future. get that I am obliged to you. His turn comes next, and I shall probably begin him to-morrow. Mr. G. is here, Mrs. Throckmorton's uncle. He is lately arrived from Italy, where he has reMr. George Throckmorton is at the Hall. I sided several years, and is so much the gentleman, thought I had known these brothers long enough that it is impossible to be more so. Sensible, poto have found out all their talents and accomplish- lite, obliging; slender in his figure, and in manments. But I was mistaken. The day before ners most engaging-every way worthy to be reyesterday, after having walked with us, they car-lated to the Throckmortons. ried us up to the library (a more accurate writer I have read Savary's travels into Egypt; Mewould have said conducted us) and then they moirs du Baron de Tott; Fenn's original letters; showed me the contents of an immense port-folio, the letters of Frederick of Bohemia, and am now the work of their own hands. It was furnished reading Memoirs d' Henri de Lorraine, Duc de with drawings of the architectural kind, executed Guise. I have also read Barclay's Argenis, a in a most masterly manner, and among others, con- Latin Romance, and the best Romance that ever tained outside and inside views of the Pantheon, was written. All these, together with Madan's I mean the Roman one. They were all, I believe, letters to Priestley, and several pamphlets, within made at Rome. Some men may be estimated at these two months. So I am a great reader. a first interview, but the Throckmortons must be seen often, and known long, before one can understand all their value. They often inquire after you, and ask me whether you visit Weston this autumn. I answer yes, and I charge you, my dearest cousin, to TO LADY HESKETH. W. C. The Lodge, Sept. 15, 1787. authenticate my information. Write to me, and MY DEAREST COUSIN, tell us when we may expect to see you. We ON Monday last I was invited to meet your vere disappointed that we had no letter from you friend Miss J at the Hall, and there we found this morning. You will find me coated and but- her. Her good nature, her humorous manner, toned according to your recommendation. and her good sense, are charming; insomuch tha even I, who was never much addicted to speech-[there never been a throne so execrably tyrannical making, and who at present find myself particu- as theirs. The heads of the innocent that have larly indisposed to it, could not help saying at part-been cut off to gratify the humour or caprice of ing, I am glad that I have seen you, and sorry their tyrants, could they be all collected and dis that I have seen so little of you. We were some-charged against the walls of their city, would not times many in company; on Thursday we were leave one stone on another. fifteen, but we had not altogether so much vivacity O that you were here this beautiful day! It is and cleverness as Miss J- whose talent at too fine by half to be spent in London. I have a mirth-making has this rare property to recommend perpetual din in my head, and though I am not it, that nobody suffers by it. deaf, hear nothing aright, neither my own voice, I am making a gravel walk for winter use, un-nor that of others. I am under a tub, from which der a warm hedge in the orchard. It shall be fur- tub accept my best love. nished with a low seat for your accommodation, You are very much wished for by our friends at the Hall-how much by me I will not tell you till the second week in October Yours, W. C. TO LADY HESKETH. MY DEAR COZ, The Lodge, Sept. 29, 1787. I THANK you for your political intelligence; retired as we are, and seemingly excluded from the world, we are not indifferent to what passes in it; on the contrary, the arrival of a newspaper, at the present juncture, never fails to furnish us with a theme for discussion, short indeed, but satisfactory, for we seldom differ in opinion. Yours, W. C. TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. Weston, Oct. 19, 1787. A summons from Johnson, which I received yesterday, calls my attention once more to the business of translation. Before I begin I am willing to catch though but a short opportunity to acknowledge your last favour. The necessity of applying myself with all diligence to a long work that has been but too long interrupted, will make my opportunities of writing rare in future. Air and exercise are necessary to all men, but particularly so to the man whose mind labours; and to him who has been all his life accustomed to much of both, they are necessary in the extreme. My time since we parted has been devoted entirely to the recovery of health and strength for this service, and I am willing to hope with good effect. Ten months have passed since I discontinued my poetical efforts; I do not expect to find the same I have received such an impression of the Turks readiness as before, till exercise of the neglected from the memoirs of Baron de Tott, which I read faculty, such as it is, shall have restored it to me. lately, that I can hardly help presaging the con- You find yourself, I hope, by this time as comquest of that empire by the Russians. The disci-fortably situated in your new abode as in a new ples of Mahomet are such babies in modern tac-abode one can be. I enter perfectly into all your tics, and so enervated by the use of their favourite feelings on occasion of the change. A sensible drug; so fatally secure in their predestinarian mind can not do violence even to a local attachdream, and so prone to a spirit of mutiny against ment without much pain. When my father died their leaders, that nothing less can be expected. I was young, too young to have reflected much. In fact, they had not been their own masters at He was Rector of Berkhamstead, and there I was this day, had but the Russians known the weak- born. It had never occurred to me that a parson ness of their enemies half so well as they un- has no fee-simple in the house and glebe he occudoubtedly know it now. Add to this, that there pies. There was neither tree, nor gate, nor stile, is a popular prophecy current in both countries, in all that country, to which I did not feel a relathat Turkey is one day to fall under the Russian tion, and the house itself I preferred to a palace. sceptre. A prophecy which, from whatever au- I was sent for from London to attend him in his thority it be derived, as it will naturally encourage last illness, and he died just before I arrived. Then, the Russians, and dispirit the Turks in exact pro- and not till then, I felt for the first time that I and portion to the degree of credit it has obtained on my native place were disunited for ever. I sighed both sides, has a direct tendency to effect its own a long adieu to fields and woods, from which I complishment. In the mean time, if I wish once thought I should never be parted, and was at them conquered, it is only because I think it will no time so sensible of their beauties, as just when be a blessing to them to be governed by any other I left them all behind me, to return no more. hand than their own. For under Heaven has W.C TO LADY HESKETH. that though to a bystander it may seem an occupation surpassing the powers of a constitution never very athletic, and, at present, not a little the The Lodge, Nov. 10, 1787. worse for wear, I can invent for myself no employTHE Parliament, my dearest Cousin, prorogued ment that does not exhaust my spirits more. I continually, is a meteor dancing before my eyes, will not pretend to account for this; I will only say promising me my wish only to disappoint me, and that it is not the language of predilection for a fanone but the king and his ministers can tell when vourite amusement, but that the fact is really so. you and I shall come together. I hope however I have even found that those plaything avocations that the period, though so often postponed, is not far distant, and that once more I shall behold you, and experience your power to make winter gay and sprightly. which one may execute almost without any atten- TO LADY HESKETH. The Lodge, Nov. 27, 1787. I have a kitten, my dear, the drollest of all creatures that ever wore a cat's skin. Her gambols are not to be described, and would be incredible if they could. In point of size she is likely to be a kitten always, being extremely small of her age, but time I suppose, that spoils every thing, will Ir is the part of wisdom, my dearest Cousin, to make her also a cat. You will see her I hope be- sit down contented under the demands of necesfore that melancholy period shall arrive, for no sity, because they are such. I am sensible that wisdom that she may gain by experience and re- you can not, in my uncle's present infirm state, and flection hereafter, will compensate the loss of her of which it is not possible to expect any conside present hilarity. She is dressed in a tortoise-shell suit, and I know that you will delight in her. rable amendment, indulge either us, or yourself, with a journey to Weston. Yourself I say, both Mrs. Throckmorton carries us to-morrow in her because I know it will give you pleasure to see chaise to Chicheley. The event however must be Causidice mi* once more, especially in the comsupposed to depend on elements, at least on the fortable abode where you have placed him, and state of the atmosphere, which is turbulent beyond because, after so long an imprisonment in London, measure. Yesterday it thundered, last night it you, who love the country, and have a taste for lightened, and at three this morning I saw the sky it, would of course be glad to return to it. For my as red as a city in flames could have made it. I own part, to me it is ever new, and though I have have a leech in a bottle that foretels all these pro- now been an inhabitant of this village a twelvedigies and convulsions of nature. No, not as you month, and have during the half of that time been will naturally conjecture by articulate utterance at liberty to expatiate, and to make discoveries, I of oracular notices, but by a variety of gesticula- am daily finding out fresh scenes and walks, which tions, which here I have not room to give an ac- you would never be satisfied with enjoying: some count of. Suffice it to say, that no change of of them are unapproachable by you either on foot weather surprises him, and that in point of the or in your carriage. Had you twenty toes (whereearliest and most accurate intelligence, he is worth as I suppose you have but ten) you could not reach all the barometers in the world. None of them them; and coach wheels have never been seen there all indeed can make the least pretence to foretell since the flood. Before it indeed, (as Burnet says thunder-a species of capacity of which he has that the earth was then perfectly free from all inegiven the most unequivocal evidence. I gave but qualities in its surface) they might have been seen sixpence for him, which is a groat more than the market price, though he is in fact, or rather would be if leeches were not found in every ditch, an invaluable acquisition. TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ. W. C. Nov. 16, 1787. there every day. We have other walks both upon hill tops, and in valleys beneath, some of which by the help of your carriage, and many of them without its help, would be always at your command. On Monday morning last, Sam brought me word that there was a man in the kitchen who desired to speak with me. I ordered him in. A plain, decent, elderly figure made its appearance, and being desired to sit, spoke as follows: "Sir, I am clerk of the parish of All-saints in Northampton; brother of Mr. C. the upholsterer. It is customary for the person in my office to annex to a bill of 1 THANK you for the solicitude that you express on the subject of my present studies. The work is undoubtedly long and laborious, but it has an end, and, proceeding leisurely, with a due attention to the use of air and exercise, it is possible that I The appellation which Sir Thomas Hesketh used to give may live to finish it. Assure yourself of one thing, him in jest, when he was of the Temple. . mortality, which he publishes at Christmas, a You say well, my dear, that in Mr. Throckcopy of verses. You would do me a great favour, morton we have a peerless neighbour; we have so. sir, if you would furnish me with one." To this In point of information upon all important subjects. I replied, "Mr. C. you have several men of genius in respect too of expression and address, and in in your town, why have you not applied to some short, every thing that enters into the idea of a genof them? There is a namesake of yours in parti- tleman, I have not found his equal, not often, any cular, C, the statuary, who, every body knows, where. Were I asked who in my judgment apis a first-rate maker of verses. He surely is the proaches nearest to him, in all his amiable qualiman of all the world for your purpose."-"Alas! ties, and qualifications, I should certainly answer Sir, I have heretofore borrowed help from him, his brother George, who if he be not his exact but he is a gentleman of so much reading, that counterpart, endued with precisely the same meathe people of our town can not understand him." sure of the same accomplishments, is nevertheless I confess to you, my dear, I felt all the force of the deficient in none of them, and is of a character compliment implied in this speech, and was al- singularly agreeable, in respect of a certain manly, most ready to answer, Perhaps, my good friend, I had almost said, heroic frankness, with which they may find me unintelligible too for the same his air strikes one almost immediately. So far as reason. But on asking him whether he had walked his opportunities have gone, he has ever been as over to Weston on purpose to implore the assist-friendly and obliging to us, as we could wish him, ance of my muse, and on his replying in the af- and were he lord of the Hall to-morrow, would I firmative, I felt my mortified vanity a little con- dare say conduct himself toward us in such a mansoled, and pitying the poor man's distress, which ner, as to leave us as little sensible as possible appeared to be considerable, promised to supply of the removal of its present owners. But all this him. The wagon has accordingly gone this day I say, my dear, merely for the sake of stating the to Northampton loaded in part with my effusions matter as it is; not in order to obviate, or to prove in the mortuary style. A fig for poets who write the inexpedience of any future plans of yours, epitaphs upon individuals! I have written one concerning the place of our residence. Providence that serves two hundred persons. and time shape every thing; I should rather say Providence alone, for time has often no hand in the wonderful changes that we experience; they take place in a moment. It is not therefore worth while perhaps to consider much what we will, or will not do in years to come, concerning which all that I can say with certainty at present is, that those years will be to me the most welcome, in which I can see the most of you. W. C. A few days since I received a second very obliging letter from Mr. M- -. He tells me that his own papers, which are by far, he is sorry to say it, the most numerous, are marked V.I.Z. Accordingly, my dear, I am happy to find that I am engaged in a correspondence with Mr. Viz, a gentleman for whom I have always entertained the profoundest veneration. But the serious fact is, that the papers distinguished by those signatures have ever pleased me most, and struck me as the work of a sensible man, who knows the world well, and has more of Addison's delicate humour than any body. TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT. MY DEAR FRIEND, Weston, Dec. 6, 1787. A poor man begged food at the Hall lately. A SHORT time since, by the help of Mrs. ThrockThe cook gave him some vermicelli soup. He morton's chaise, Mrs. Unwin and I reached ladled it about some time with the spoon, and then Chicheley. "Now," said I to Mrs. Chester, "I returned it to her saying, "I am a poor man it is shall write boldly to your brother Walter, and true, and I am very hungry, but yet I can not eat will do it immediately. I have passed the gulf broth with maggots in it." Once more, my dear, a thousand thanks for your box full of good things, useful things, and beautiful things. Yours ever, W. C. TO LADY HESKETH. The Lodge, Dec. 4, 1787. that parted us, and he will be glad to hear it." But let not the man who translates Homer be so presumptuous as to have a will of his own, or to promise any thing. A fortnight, I suppose, has elapsed since I paid this visit, and I am only now beginning to fulfil what I then undertook to accomplish without delay. The old Grecian must answer for it. I spent my morning there so agreeably, that I have ever since regretted more sensibly, that there I AM glad, my dearest coz, that my last letter proved so diverting. You may assure yourself of are five miles of a dirty country interposed between the literal truth of the whole narration, and that however droll, it was not in the least indebted to any embellishments of mine. us. For the increase of my pleasure, I had the good fortune to find your brother the bishop there. We had much talk about many things, but most. I believe, about Homer; and great satisfaction it because, as Hopkins answers, we must have regave me to find, that on the most important points fused it. But it fell out singularly enough, that of that subject his lordship and I were exactly this ball was held, of all days in the year, on my of one mind. In the course of our conversation birth day-and so I told them--but not till it was he produced from his pocket-book a translation all over. of the first ten or twelve lines of the Iliad, and in Though I have thought proper never to take order to leave my judgment free, informed me any notice of the arrival of my MSS. together kindly at the same time that they were not his with the other good things in the box, yet certain own. I read them, and according to the best it is, that I received them. I have furbished up of my recollection of the original, found them well the tenth book till it is as bright as silver, and am executed. The bishop indeed acknowledged that now occupied in bestowing the same labour upon they were not faultless, neither did I find them the eleventh. The twelfth and thirteenth are in Had they been such, I should have felt their the hands of -, and the fourteenth and fifperfection as a discouragement hardly to be sur-teenth are ready to succeed them. This notable mounted; for at that passage I have laboured job is the delight of my heart, and how sorry shall more abundantly than at any other, and hitherto I be when it is ended. So. with the least success. I am convinced that Ho- The smith and the carpenter, my dear, are both mer placed it at the threshold of his work as a in the room, hanging a bell; if I therefore make a scarecrow to all translators. Now, Walter, if thou thousand blunders, let the said intruders answer knowest the author of this version, and it be not for them all. treason against thy brother's confidence in thy se I thank you, my dear, for your history of the crecy, declare him to me. Had I been so happy G-s. What changes in that family! And how as to have seen the bishop again before he left this many thousand families have in the same time excountry, I should certainly have asked him the perienced changes as violent as theirs! The course question, having a curiosity upon the matter that is extremely troublesome. even now. of a rapid river is the justest of all emblems, to express the variableness of our scene below. Shakspeare says, none ever bathed himself twice in the same stream, and it is equally true that the world upon which we close our eyes at night is never the same with that on which we open them in the morning. The awkward situation in which you found yourself on receiving a visit from an authoress, whose works, though presented to you long before, you had never read, made me laugh, and it was no sin against my friendship for you to do so. It was a ridiculous distress, and I can laugh at it I do not always say, give my love to my uncle, I hope she catechised you well. How because he knows that I always love him. I do did you extricate yourself?-Now laugh at me. not always present Mrs. Unwin's love to you, The clerk of the parish of All Saints, in the town partly for the same reason (Deuce take the smith of Northampton, having occasion for a poet, has and the carpenter,) and partly because I forget it. appointed me to the office. I found myself obliged But to present my own I forget never, for I always to comply. The bellman comes next, and then, I have to finish my letter, which I know not how think, though even borne upon your swan's quill, to do, my dearest coz, without telling you that I I can soar no higher! am ever yours, W. C. I am, my dear friend, faithfully yours, W.C. TO LADY HESKETH. TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. DEAR SIR, Weston, Dec. 13, 1787. The Lodge, Dec. 10, 1787. UNLESS my memory deceives me, I forewarned I THANK you for the snip of cloth, commonly you that I should prove a very unpunctual correscalled a pattern. At present I have two coats, pondent. The work that lies before me engages and but one back. If at any time hereafter I unavoidably my whole attention. The length of should find myself possessed of fewer coats, or more it, the spirit of it, and the exactness that is requibacks, it will be of use to me. site in its due performance, are so many most in Even as you suspect, my dear, so it proved. teresting subjects of consideration to me, who find The ball was prepared for, the ball was held, and that my best attempts are only introductory to the ball passed, and we had nothing to do with it. others, and that what to day I suppose finished, Mrs. Throckmorton, knowing our trim, did not to-morrow I must begin again. Thus it fares give us the pain of an invitation, for a pain it with a translator of Homer. To exhibit the mawould have been. And why? as Sternhold says,-jesty of such a poet in a modern language is a |