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If you send me franks, I shall write long let- especially lest some French hero should call me to ters-Valete, sicut et nos valemus! Amate, sicut account for it-I add it on the other side. An

et nos amamus.

MON AMI,

TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.

author ought to be the best judge of his own mean-
ing; and whether I have succeeded or not, I can
not but wish, that where a translator is wanted,
the writer was always to be his own.

False, cruel, disappointed, stung to the heart,
France quits the warrior's for the assassin's part;
To dirty hands, a dirty bride conveys,
Bids the low street and lofty palace blaze.
Her sons too weak to vanquish us alone,
She hires the worst and basest of our own,
Kneel, France! a suppliant conquers us with ease,
We always spare a coward on his knees.

July 8, 1780. IF you ever take the tip of the chancellor's ear between your finger and thumb, you can hardly improve the opportunity to better purpose, than if you should whisper into it the voice of compassion and lenity to the lace-makers. I am an eye-witness of their poverty, and do know that hundreds I have often wondered that Dryden's illustrious in this little town are upon the point of starving, epigram on Milton (in my mind the second best and that the most unremitting industry is but that ever was made) has never been translated into barely sufficient to keep them from it. I know Latin, for the admiration of the learned in other that the bill by which they would have been so countries. I have at last presumed to venture upon fatally affected is thrown out: but lord Stormont the task myself. The great closeness of the ori threatens them with another; and if another like ginal, which is equal in that respect to the most it should pass, they are undone. We lately sent compact Latin I ever saw, made it extremely diffia petition from hence to lord Dartmouth; I signed cult. 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 cellor's recovery; nor can I strike off so much as I have not one bright thought upon the chanthis beggarly town, the most of whom had reason one sparkling atom from that brilliant subject. It enough, while the bill was in agitation, to look is not when I will, nor upon what I will, but as a upon every loaf they bought as the last they should thought happens to occur to me; and then I verever be able to earn. I can never think it good policy to incur the certain inconvenience of ruin-sify, whether I will or not. I never write but for my amusement; and what I write is sure to aning thirty thousand, in order to prevent a remote swer that end, if it answers no other. If, besides and possible damage though to a much greater this purpose, the more desirable one of entertainnumber. The measure is like a scythe, and the ing you be effected, I then receive double fruit of poor lace-makers are the sickly crop that trembles

America is like the streak of dawn in their hori

Tres, tria, &c.

before the edge of it. The prospect of peace with my labour, and consider this produce of it as a second crop, the more valuable, because less exzon; but this bill is like a black cloud behind it, that sition to you, I have done with it. It is pretty pected. But when I have once remitted a compothreatens 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 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 title of "better," was the production of a friend; and, except that for a modest reason he omitted the third couplet, I think it 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,

certain that I shall never read it or think of it again.
From that moment I have constituted you sole
of its defects, which it is sure to have.
judge of its accomplishments, if it has any, and

For this reason I decline answering the ques-
tion with which you concluded your last, and can
not 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.
W. C.

TO MRS. COWPER.

MY DEAR COUSIN,
July 20, 1780.
MR. NEWTON having desired me to be of the
party, I am come to meet him. You see me sixteen

* Vid. Poems.

years older at the least, than when I saw you last; but one blows his nose, and the other rubs his eyethe effects of time seem to have taken place rather brows; (by the way this is very much in Homer's on the outside of my head, than within it. What manner) such seems to be the case between you was brown is become gray, but what was foolish, and me. After a silence of some days I write you a remains foolish still. Green fruit must rot before long something, that (I suppose) was nothing to it ripens, if the season is such as to afford it nothing the purpose, because it has not afforded you mabut cold winds and dark clouds, that interrupt every terials for an answer. Nevertheless, as it often ray of sunshine. My days steal away silently, happens in the case above-stated, one of the disand march on (as poor mad King Lear would have tressed parties, being deeply sensible of the awkmade his soldiers march) as if they were shod with wardness of a dumb duet, breaks silence again, felt; not so silently but that I hear them; yet and resolves to speak, though he has nothing to were it not that I am always listening to their say. So it fares with me, I am with you again in flight, having no infirmity that I had not when I the form of an epistle, though, considering my was much younger, I should deceive myself with present emptiness, I have reason to fear that your an imagination that I am still young. only joy upon the occasion will be, that it is conveyed to you in a frank.

I am fond of writing as an amusement, but do not always find it one. Being rather scantily fur- When I began, I expected no interruption. But nished with subjects that are good for any thing, if I had expected interruptions without end, I and corresponding only with those who have no should have been less disappointed. First came relish for such as are good for nothing, I often find the barber; who, after having embellished the outmyself reduced to the necessity, the disagreeable side of my head, has left the inside just as unfurnecessity, of writing about myself. This does nished as he found it. Then came Olney bridge, not mend the matter much; for though in a de- not into the house, but into the conversation. The scription of my own condition, I discover abundant cause relating to it was tried on Tuesday at Buckmaterials to employ my pen upon, yet as the task ingham. The judge directed the jury to find a is not very agreeable to me, so I am sufficiently verdict favourable to Olney. The jury consisted aware that it is likely to prove irksome to others. of one knave and eleven fools. The last-mentionA painter who should confine himself in the ex- cd followed the afore-mentioned, as sheep follow a ercise of his art to the drawing of his own picture, bell-wether, and decided in direct opposition to the must be a wonderful coxcomb, if he did not soon grow sick of his occupation; and be peculiarly fortunate, if he did not make others as sick as himself.

said judge. Then a flaw was discovered in the indictment. The indictment was quashed, and an order made for a new trial. The new trial will be in the King's Bench, where said knave and said Remote as your dwelling is from the late scene fools will have nothing to do with it. So the men of riot and confusion, I hope that though you could of Olney fling up their caps, and assure themselves not but hear the report, you heard no more, and of a complete victory. A victory will save me and that the roarings of the mad multitude did not your mother many shillings, perhaps some pounds, reach you. That was a day of terror to the innocent, which, except that it has afforded me a subject to and the present is a day of still greater terror to the write upon, was the only reason why I said so much guilty. The law was for a few moments like an about it. I know you take an interest in all that arrow in the quiver, seemed to be of no use, and concerns us, and will consequently rejoice with us did no execution; now it is an arrow upon the in the prospect of an event in which we are constring, and many, who despised it lately, are trem-cerned so nearly. Yours affectionately, W. C. bling as they stand before the point of it.

I have talked more already than I have formerly done in three visits-you remember my taciturnity, never to be forgotten by those who knew me; not to depart entirely from what might be, for aught I know, the most shining part of my character-I here shut my mouth, make my bow, and return to Olney.

W. C.

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You may think perhaps that I deal more liberally with Mr. Unwin, in the way of poetical export, than I do with you, and I believe you have reason -the truth is this-if I walked the streets with a fiddle under my arm, I should never think of performing before the window of a privy counsellor, or a chief justice, but should rather make free with ears more likely to be open to such amusement.As two men sit silent, after having exhausted The trifles I produce in this way are indeed such all their topics of conversation: one says-'It is trifles, that I can not think them seasonable prevery fine weather,'-and the other says- Yes;'-sents for you. Mr. Unwin himself would not be

TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.
July 27, 1780.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

offended if I was to tell him that there is this dif-|-'My good sir, a man has no right to do either.' ference between him and Mr. Newton; that the But it is to be hoped that the present century has latter is already an apostle, while he himself is on- nothing to do with the mouldy opinions of the last, ly undergoing the business of an incubation, with and so good Sir Launcelot, or Sir Paul, or whata hope that he may be hatched in time. When ever be your name, step into your picture frame my muse comes forth arrayed in sables, at least in again, and look as if you thought for another cena robe of graver cast, I make no scruple to direct tury, and leave us moderns in the mean time to her to my friend at Hoxton. This has been one think when we can, and to write whether we can reason why I have so long delayed the riddle. But or not, else we might as well be dead as you are. lest I should seem to set a value upon it, that I do not, by making it an object of still further inquiry, here it comes.

I am just two and two, I am warm, I am cold,
And the parent of numbers that can not be told,
I am lawful, unlawful-a duty, a fault,
I am often sold dear, good for nothing when bought,
An extraordinary boon, and a matter of course,
And yielded with pleasure-when taken by force.

W. C.

When we look back upon our forefathers, we seem to look back upon the people of another nation, almost upon creatures of another species. Their vast rambling mansions, spacious halls, and painted casements, the gothic porch smothered with honeysuckles, their little gardens and high walls, their box-edgings, balls of holly, and yew-tree statues, are become so entirely unfashionable now, that we can hardly believe it possible, that a people who resembled us so little in their taste, should resemble us in any thing else. But in every thing else, I suppose, they were our counterparts exactly; and time, that has sewed up the slashed sleeve, and reduced the large trunk hose to a neat pair of silk stockings, has left human nature just where it found it. The inside of the man at least has

and aims are just what they ever were. They wear perhaps a handsomer disguise than they did in days of yore: for philosophy and literature will have their effect upon the exterior; but in every other respect a modern is only an ancient in a different dress. W.C

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.

August 21, 1780.

TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. MY DEAR FRIEND, August 6, 1780. You like to hear from me-This is a very good reason why I should write-But I have nothing undergone no change. His passions, appetites, to say-This seems equally a good reason why 1 should not.-Yet if you had alighted from your horse at our door this morning, and at this present writing being five o'clock in the afternoon, had found occasion to say to me-'Mr. Cowper, you have not spoke since I came in, have you resolved never to speak again?' it would be but a poor reply, if in answer to the summons I should plead inability as my best and only excuse. And this by the way suggests to me a seasonable piece of instruction, and reminds me of what I am very apt to forget, when I have any epistolary business THE following occurrence ought not to be passin hand, that a letter may be written upon any ed over in silence, in a place where so few notable thing or nothing just as that any thing or nothing ones are to be met with. Last Wednesday night, happens to occur. A man that has a journey be- while we were at supper, between the hours of fore him twenty miles in length, which he is to eight and nine, I heard an unusual noise in the perform on foot, will not hesitate and doubt whe-back parlour, as if one of the hares was entangled, ther he shall set out or not, because he does not and endeavouring to disengage herself. I was just readily conceive how he shall ever reach the end going to rise from table, when it ceased. In about of it; for he knows, that by the simple operation five minutes, a voice on the outside of the parlour of moving one foot forward first, and then the door inquired if one of my hares had got away. I other, he shall be sure to accomplish it. So it is immediately rushed into the next room, and found in the present case, and so it is in every similar that my poor favourite Puss had made her escape. case. A letter is written as a conversation is main- She had gnawed in sunder the strings of a lattice tained, or a journey performed, not by preconcert- work, with which I thought I had sufficiently seed or premeditated means, a new contrivance, or an cured the window, and which I preferred to any invention never heard of before, but merely by other sort of blind, because it admitted plenty of maintaining a progress, and resolving as a postil- air. From thence I hastened to the kitchen, where lion does, having once set out, never to stop till we reach the appointed end. If a man may talk without thinking, why may he not write upon the same terms? A grave gentleman of the last century, a tie-wig, square-toe, Steinkirk figure, would say,

I saw the redoubtable Thomas Freeman, who told me, that having seen her, just after she had dropped into the street, he attempted to cover her with his hat, but she screamed out, and leaped directly over his head. I then desired him to pursue as fast

as possible, and added Richard Coleman to the saw them last, are old still; but it costs me a good chase, as being nimbler, and carrying less weight deal sometimes to think of those who were at that than Thomas; not expecting to see her again, but time young, as being older than they were. Not desirous to learn, if possible, what became of her. having been an eyewitness of the change that time In something less than an hour, Richard returned, has made in them, and my former idea of them not almost breathless, with the following account. being corrected by observation, it remains the That soon after he began to run, he left Tom be- same; my memory presents me with this image hind him, and came in sight of a most numerous unimpaired, and while it retains the resemblance hunt, of men, women, children, and dogs; that he of what they were, forgets that by this time the did his best to keep back the dogs, and presently picture may have lost much of its likeness, through outstripped the crowd, so that the race was at last the alteration that succeeding years have made in disputed between himself and Puss-she ran right the original. I know not what impressions Time through the town, and down the lane that leads to may have made upon your person, for while his Dropshort-a little before she came to the house, he claws (as our grannams called them) strike deep got the start and turned her; she pushed for the furrows in some faces, he seems to sheathe them town again, and soon after she entered it sought with much tenderness, as if fearful of doing injury shelter in Mr. Wagstaff's tan-yard, adjoining to to others. But though an enemy to the person, old Mr. Drake's-Sturge's harvest men were at friend to the mind, and you have found supper, and saw her from the opposite side of the him so. Though even in this respect his treatway. There she encountered the tan-pits full of ment of us depends upon what he meets with at water; and while she was struggling out of one our hands; if we use him well, and listen to his pit, and plunging into another, and almost drown- admonitions, he is a friend indeed, but otherwise ed, one of the men drew her out by the ears and the worst of enemies, who takes from us daily secured her. She was then well washed in a buck- something that we valued, and gives us nothing et, to get the lime out of her coat, and brought better in its stead. It is well with them who, like home in a sack at ten o'clock. you, can stand a tiptoe on the mountain top of This frolic cost us four shillings, but you may human life, look down with pleasure upon the believe we did not grudge a farthing of it. The valley they have passed, and sometimes stretch poor creature received only a little hurt in one of their wings in joyful hope of a happy flight into her claws, and in one of her ears, and is now al- eternity. Yet a little while and your hope will be most as well as ever. accomplished.

I do not call this an answer to your letter, but such as it is I send it, presuming upon that interest which I know you take in my minutest concerns, which I can not express better than in the words of Terence a little varied-Nihil mei a te alienum putas. Yours, my dear friend, W. C.

he is a

When you can favour me with a little account of your own family, without inconvenience, I shall be glad to receive it; for though separated from my kindred by little more than half a century of miles, I know as little of their concerns as if oceans and continents were interposed between us.

Yours, my dear cousin, W. C.

TO MRS. COWPER.

August 31, 1780.

TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.
MY DEAR FRIEND,
Sept. 3, 1780.

MY DEAR COUSIN, I AM obliged to you for your long letter, which did not seem so, and for your short one, which was I AM glad you are so provident, and that, while more than I had any reason to expect. Short as you are young, you have furnished yourself with it was, it conveyed to me two interesting articles the means of comfort in old age. Your crutch of intelligence. An account of your recovering and your pipe may be of use to you, (and may from a fever, and of lady Cowper's death. The they be so) should your years be extended to an latter was, I suppose, to be expected, for by what antediluvian date; and for your perfect accommoremembrance I have of her ladyship, who was ne- dation, you seem to want nothing but a clerk called ver much acquainted with her, she had reached Snuffle, and a sexton of the name of Skeleton, to those years that are always found upon the borders make your ministerial equipage complete. of another world. As for you, your time of life I think I have read as much of the first volume is comparatively of a youthful date. You may of the Biographia as I shall ever read. I find it think of death as much as you please (you can not very amusing; more so perhaps than it would think of it too much), but I hope you will live to have been had they sifted their characters with think of it many years. more exactness, and admitted none but those who It costs me not much difficulty to suppose that had in some way or other entitled themselves to my friends who were already grown old, when I immortality, by deserving well of the public. Such

a compilation would perhaps have been more ju- having exhausted his little stock of attention and dicious, though I confess it would have afforded diligence in making that noble acquisition, grows less variety. The priests and monks of earlier, weary of his task, conceives a dislike for study, and the doctors of later days, who have signalized and perhaps makes but a very indifferent progress themselves by nothing but a controversial pam-afterwards. The mind and body have in this rephlet, long since thrown by, and never to be pe-spect a striking resemblance of each other. In rused again, might have been forgotten without childhood, they are both nimble, but not strong; injury or loss to the national character for learning they can skip and frisk about with wonderful agior genius. This observation suggested to me the lity, but hard labour spoils them both. In maturer following lines, which may serve to illustrate my years they become less active, but more vigorous, meaning, and at the same time to give my criti-more capable of a fixed application, and can make cism a sprightlier air.

Oh fond attempts, &c.*

Virgil admits none but worthies into the Elysian Fields; I can not recollect the lines in which he describes them all, but these in particular I well

remember

Quique sui memores alios fecere merendo,

Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes.

A chaste and scrupulous conduct like his would well become the writer of national biography.But enough of this.

Our respects attend Miss Shuttleworth, with many thanks for her intended present. Some purses derive all their value from their contents, but these will have an intrinsic value of their own:

is

and though mine should be often empty, which not an improbable supposition, I shall still esteem it highly on its own account.

themselves sport with that which a little earlier
would have affected them with intolerable fatigue.
I should recommend it to you therefore (but after
all you must judge for yourself) to allot the two
next years of little John's scholarship to writing
and arithmetic, together with which, for variety's
sake, and because it is capable of being formed into
an amusement, I would mingle geography, a sci-
ence (which, if not attended to betimes, is seldom
made an object of much consideration) essentially
necessary to the accomplishment of a gentleman,
yet (as I know by sad experience) imperfectly, if
at all, inculcated in the schools. Lord Spenser's
son, when he was four years of age, knew the
situation of every kingdom, country, city, river,
and remarkable mountain in the world. For this

attainment, which I suppose his father had never been accustomed to amuse himself with those maps made, he was indebted to a plaything; having which are cut into several compartments, so as to If you could meet with a second-hand Virgil, be put together again with an exact coincidence be thrown into a heap of confusion, that they may ditto Homer, both Iliad and Odyssey, together of all their angles and bearings, so as to form a with a Clavis, for I have no Lexicon, and all tolerably cheap, I shall be obliged to you if you perfect whole. will make the purchase. Yours, W. C.

TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

If he begins Latin and Greek at eight, or even at nine years of age, it is surely soon enough. Seven years, the usual allowance for those acquisitions, are more than sufficient for the purpose, especially with his readiness in learning; for you would hardly wish to have him qualified for the Sept. 7, 1780. As many gentlemen as there are in the world, much too early for it, and when he could hardly university before fifteen, a period, in my mind, who have children, and heads capable of reflecting be trusted there without the utmost danger to his on the important subject of their education, so morals. Upon the whole, you will perceive that many opinions there are about it; many of them in my judgment the difficulty, as well as the wisjust and sensible, though almost all differing from each other. With respect to the education of boys, back, a boy of his parts, than in pushing him fordom, consists more in bridling in, and keeping I think they are generally made to draw in Latin ward. If therefore at the end of the two next and Greek trammels too soon. It is pleasing, no years, instead of putting a grammar into his hand," doubt, to a parent to see his child already in some sort a proficient in those languages, at an age when you should allow him to amuse himself with some most others are entirely ignorant of them; but hence it often happens, that a boy, who could construe a fable of Æsop at six or seven years of age,

losophy for another year, I think it would answer agreeable writers upon the subject of natural phiwell. There is a book called Cosmotheoria Puerilis, there are Derham's Physico, and Astrotheology, together with several others in the same manner,

• Verses 'On observing some Names of little Note recorded very intelligible even to a child, and full of useful

in the Biographia Britannica.'

instruction.

W. C.

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