PART THE SECOND. (continued 10)

W. C.

TO MRS. KING.[404]

Weston Lodge, March 3, 1788.

I owe you many acknowledgments, dear madam, for that unreserved communication, both of your history and of your sentiments with which you favoured me in your last. It gives me great pleasure to learn that you are so happily circumstanced, both in respect of situation and frame of mind. With your view of religious subjects, you could not, indeed, speaking properly, be pronounced unhappy in any circumstances; but to have received from above, not only that faith which reconciles the heart to affliction, but many outward comforts also, and especially that greatest of all earthly comforts, a comfortable home, is happiness indeed. May you long enjoy it! As to health or sickness, you have learned already their true value, and know well that the former is no blessing, unless it be sanctified, and that the latter is one of the greatest we can receive, when we are enabled to make a proper use of it.

There is nothing in my story that can possibly be worth your knowledge; yet, lest I should seem to treat you with a reserve which at your hands I have not experienced, such as it is, I will relate it.—I was bred to the law; a profession to which I was never much inclined, and in which I engaged rather because I was desirous to gratify a most indulgent father, than because I had any hope of success in it myself. I spent twelve years in the Temple, where I made no progress in that science, to cultivate which I was sent thither. During this time my father died; not long after him died my mother-in-law: and at the expiration of it a melancholy seized me, which obliged me to quit London, and, consequently, to renounce the bar. I lived some time at St. Alban's. After having suffered in that place long and extreme affliction, the storm was suddenly dispelled, and the same day-spring from on high which has arisen upon you, arose on me also. I spent eight years in the enjoyment of it; and have, ever since the expiration of those eight years, been occasionally the prey of the same melancholy as at first. In the depths of it I wrote "The Task," and the volume which preceded it; and in the same deeps I am now translating Homer. But to return to St. Alban's. I abode there a year and half. Thence I went to Cambridge, where I spent a short time with my brother, in whose neighbourhood I determined, if possible, to pass the remainder of my days. He soon found a lodging for me at Huntingdon. At that place I had not resided long, when I was led to an intimate connexion with a family of the name of Unwin. I soon quitted my lodging, and took up my abode with them. I had not lived long under their roof, when Mr. Unwin, as he was riding one Sunday morning to his cure at Gravely, was thrown from his horse; of which fall he died. Mrs. Unwin, having the same views of the gospel as myself, and being desirous of attending a purer ministration of it than was to be found at Huntingdon, removed to Olney, where Mr. Newton was at that time the preacher, and I with her. There we continued till Mr. Newton, whose family was the only one in the place with which we could have a connexion, and with whom we lived always on the most intimate terms, left it. After his departure, finding the situation no longer desirable, and our house threatening to fall upon our heads, we removed hither. Here we have a good house in a most beautiful village, and, for the greatest part of the year, a most agreeable neighbourhood. Like you, madam, I stay much at home, and have not travelled twenty miles from this place and its environs more than once these twenty years.

All this I have written, not for the singularity of the matter, as you will perceive, but partly for the reason which I gave at the outset, and partly that, seeing we are become correspondents, we may know as much of each other as we can, and that as soon as possible.

I beg, madam, that you will present my best respects to Mr. King, whom, together with yourself, should you at any time hereafter take wing for a longer flight than usual, we shall be happy to receive at Weston; and believe me, dear madam, his and your obliged and affectionate,

W. C.

TO LADY HESKETH.

The Lodge, March 3, 1788.

One day last week, Mrs. Unwin and I, having taken our morning walk, and returning homeward through the Wilderness, met the Throckmortons. A minute after we had met them, we heard the cry of hounds at no great distance, and, mounting the broad stump of an elm, which had been felled, and by the aid of which we were enabled to look over the wall, we saw them. They were all at that time in our orchard: presently we heard a terrier, belonging to Mrs. Throckmorton, which you may remember by the name of Fury, yelping with much vehemence, and saw her running through the thickets within a few yards of us at her utmost speed, as if in pursuit of something which we doubted not was the fox. Before we could reach the other end of the Wilderness, the hounds entered also; and when we arrived at the gate which opens into the grove, there we found the whole weary cavalcade assembled. The huntsman, dismounting, begged leave to follow his hounds on foot, for he was sure, he said, that they had killed him—a conclusion which I suppose he drew from their profound silence. He was accordingly admitted, and, with a sagacity that would not have dishonoured the best hound in the world, pursuing precisely the same track which the fox and the dogs had taken, though he had never had a glimpse of either after their first entrance through the rails, arrived where he found the slaughtered prey. He soon produced dead reynard, and rejoined us in the grove with all his dogs about him. Having an opportunity to see a ceremony, which I was pretty sure would never fall in my way again, I determined to stay and to notice all that passed with the most minute attention. The huntsman, having, by the aid of a pitchfork, lodged reynard on the arm of an elm, at the height of about nine feet from the ground, there left him for a considerable time. The gentlemen sat on their horses contemplating the fox, for which they had toiled so hard; and the hounds, assembled at the foot of the tree, with faces not less expressive of the most rational delight, contemplated the same object. The huntsman remounted; cut off a foot, and threw it to the hounds—one of them swallowed it whole like a bolus. He then once more alighted, and, drawing down the fox by the hinder legs, desired the people, who by this time were rather numerous, to open a lane for him to the right and left. He was instantly obeyed, when, throwing the fox to the distance of some yards, and screaming like a fiend, "tear him to pieces," at least six times repeatedly, he consigned him over absolutely to the pack, who in a few minutes devoured him completely. Thus, my dear, as Virgil says, what none of the gods could have ventured to promise me, time itself, pursuing its accustomed course, has of its own accord presented me with. I have been in at the death of a fox, and you now know as much of the matter as I, who am as well informed as any sportsman in England.

Yours, W. C.

TO LADY HESKETH.

The Lodge, March 12, 1788.

Slavery, and the Manners of the Great, I have read. The former I admired, as I do all that Miss More writes, as well for energy of expression, as for the tendency of the design. I have never yet seen any production of her pen that has not recommended itself by both these qualifications. There is likewise much good sense in her manner of treating every subject, and no mere poetic cant (which is the thing that I abhor) in her manner of treating any. And this I say, not because you now know and visit her, but it has long been my avowed opinion of her works, which I have both spoken and written as often as I have had occasion to mention them.[405]

Mr. Wilberforce's little book (if he was the author of it) has also charmed me. It must, I should imagine, engage the notice of those to whom it is addressed. In that case one may say to them, either answer it or be set down by it. They will do neither. They will approve, commend, and forget it. Such has been the fate of all exhortations to reform, whether in prose or verse, and however closely pressed upon the conscience, in all ages: here and there a happy individual, to whom God gives grace and wisdom to profit by the admonition, is the better for it. But the aggregate body (as Gilbert Cooper used to call the multitude) remain, though with a very good understanding of the matter, like horse and mule that have none.

We shall now soon lose our neighbours at the Hall. We shall truly miss them and long for their return. Mr. Throckmorton said to me last night, with sparkling eyes, and a face expressive of the highest pleasure—"We compared you this morning with Pope; we read your fourth Iliad and his, and I verily think we shall beat him. He has many superfluous lines, and does not interest one. When I read your translation, I am deeply affected. I see plainly your advantage, and am convinced that Pope spoiled all by attempting the work in rhyme." His brother George, who is my most active amanuensis, and who indeed first introduced the subject, seconded all he said. More would have passed, but, Mrs. Throckmorton having seated herself at the harpsichord, and for my amusement merely, my attention was of course turned to her. The new vicar of Olney is arrived, and we have exchanged visits. He is a plain, sensible man, and pleases me much. A treasure for Olney, if Olney can understand his value.

W. C.

The public mind, inflamed by details of the most revolting atrocities, which characterised the Slave Trade, became daily more agitated on this important subject, and impressed with a sense of its cruelty and injustice. To strengthen the ardour of these generous feelings, the relatives of Cowper solicited the co-operation of his pen, which was already known to have employed its powers in the vindication of oppressed Africa.[406] General Cowper, among others, suggested that the composition of songs or ballads, written in the simplicity peculiar to that style of poetry, and adapted to popular airs, might perhaps be the most efficient mode of promoting the interests of the cause. The Poet lost no time in complying with this solicitation, and composed three ballads, one of which he transmitted to the General, with the following letter.

TO GENERAL COWPER.

Weston, 1788.

My dear General,—A letter is not pleasant which excites curiosity, but does not gratify it. Such a letter was my last, the defects of which I therefore take the first opportunity to supply. When the condition of our negroes in the islands was first presented to me as a subject for songs, I felt myself not at all allured to the undertaking; it seemed to offer only images of horror, which could by no means be accommodated to the style of that sort of composition. But, having a desire to comply, if possible, with the request made to me, after turning the matter in my mind as many ways as I could, I at last, as I told you, produced three, and that which appears to myself the best of those three I have sent you. Of the other two, one is serious, in a strain of thought perhaps rather too serious, and I could not help it. The other, of which the slave-trader is himself the subject, is somewhat ludicrous. If I could think them worth your seeing, I would, as opportunity should occur, send them also. If this amuses you I shall be glad.

W. C.

THE MORNING DREAM, A BALLAD.

To the tune of "Tweed Side."[407]

Few subjects have agitated this country more deeply than the important question of the abolition of the Slave Trade; if we except, what was its final and necessary consequence, the extinction of Slavery itself. The wrongs of injured Africa seemed at length to have come up in remembrance before God, and the days of mourning to be approaching to their end. The strife of politics and the passions of contending parties gave way to the great cause of humanity, and a Pitt and a Fox, supported by many of their respective adherents, here met on common and neutral ground. The walls of parliament re-echoed with the tones of an eloquence the most sublime and impassioned, because it is the generous emotions of the heart that invigorate the intellect, and give to it a persuasive and commanding power. In the meantime the mammon of unrighteousness was not inactive; commercial cupidity and self-interest raised up a severe and determined resistance, which protracted the final settlement of this question for nearly twenty years. But its doom was sealed. The moral feeling of the country pronounced the solemn verdict of condemnation, long before the decision of Parliament confirmed that verdict by the authority and sanction of law. William Wilberforce, Esq., the great champion of this cause, who had pleaded its rights with an eloquence that had never been surpassed, and a perseverance and ardour that no opposition could subdue, lived to see the traffic in slaves declared illegal by a legislative enactment; his own country rescued from an injurious imputation; and himself distinguished by the honourable and nobly earned title of The Liberator of Africa.[408]

We have already stated that Cowper was urged to contribute some popular ballads in behalf of this benevolent enterprise, and that he composed three, one of which is inserted in the previous page. We now insert another production of the same kind, which we think possesses more pathos and spirit than the former.

THE NEGRO'S COMPLAINT.

See Poems.

To the Christian and philosophic mind, which is accustomed to trace the origin and operation of principles that powerfully affect the moral dignity and happiness of nations, it is interesting to inquire what is the rise of that high moral feeling, that keen and indignant sense of wrong and oppression, which form so distinguishing a feature in the character of this country? Why, too, when the crime and guilt of slavery attached to France, to Portugal, to Spain, to Holland, and above all to America, not less justly than to ourselves, was Great Britain the first to lead the way in this noble career of humanity, and to sacrifice sordid interest to the claims of public duty?

This inquiry is by no means irrelevant, because the same question suggested itself to the mind of Cowper, and he thus answers it—

Table Talk.

The foundation of this high national feeling must evidently be sought in the causes here specified. To these may be added the influence arising from the constitution of our government, the character of our institutions, and the freedom with which every subject undergoes the severe ordeal of public discussion.

May it always be so wisely directed, as never to incur the risk of becoming the foaming and heedless torrent; but rather resemble the majestic river, so beautifully described by the poet Denham:

"Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full."

Cooper's Hill.

It is due, however, to the venerable name of Granville Sharp, to record, more particularly, the zeal with which he called forth and fostered these feelings, and devoted his time, his talents, and his labours, in exposing the cruelty and injustice of this nefarious traffic. He brought it to the test of Scripture. He refuted those arguments which pretended to justify the practice, from the supposed authority of the Mosaic law, by proving that the servitude there mentioned was a limited service, and accompanied by the year of release[410] and jubilee. He cited passages from that law, expressly prohibiting and condemning it. "Thou shalt not oppress a stranger, for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." Exod. xxiii. 9. "If a stranger sojourn with thee, in your land, ye shall not vex the stranger," &c. &c. "Thou shalt love him as thyself." Lev. xix. 33. "Love ye therefore the stranger, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." Deut. x. 17-19. He showed at large that slavery was directly opposed to the genius and spirit of the Gospel, which connects all mankind in the bonds of fellowship and love. He adduced the beautiful and affecting remark of St. Paul, who, in his address to Philemon, when he beseeches him to take back his servant Onesimus, observes, and yet "not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord." Ver. 16.

After urging various other arguments, and insisting largely, in his "Law of Retribution," on the extent and enormity of the national sin, and its fearful consequences, he draws an affecting picture of the desolation of Africa, quoting the following words of his illustrious ancestor, Archbishop Sharp: "That Africa, which is not now more fruitful of monsters, than it was once of excellently wise and learned men; that Africa, which formerly afforded us our Clemens, our Origen, our Tertullian, our Cyprian, our Augustine, and many other extraordinary lights in the church of God; that famous Africa, in whose soil Christianity did thrive so prodigiously, and which could boast of so many flourishing churches, alas! is now a wilderness. 'The wild boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it,' 'and it bringeth forth nothing but briars and thorns.'"

Such were the appeals of Granville Sharp to the generation that is now swept away by the rapid current of time. The grave has entombed their prejudices. The great judgment day will pronounce the final verdict. It is a melancholy proof of the slow progress of truth, and of the influence of prejudice and error, that De Las Casas pleaded the injustice of slavery, before the Emperor Charles V. nearly three hundred years from the present time; and that it required this long and protracted period, before the cause of humanity finally triumphed; and even then, the triumph was restricted to the precincts of one single kingdom. That kingdom is Great Britain! Five millions are said to be still reserved in bondage and oppression.[411] May this foul stain be speedily effaced; and civilized nations learn, that they can never found a title to true greatness till the rights of humanity and justice are publicly recognised and respected!

We could have dwelt with delight on the zeal of Ramsay and Clarkson, but our limits do not allow further digression, and the name of Cowper demands and merits our attention.

How much the cause is indebted to his zeal and benevolence, may be collected from the following extracts.

Charity.

The verses which we next insert unite the inspiration of poetry with the manly feelings of the Englishman, and the ardour of genuine humanity.

The Task—The Timepiece.

But, highly as we appreciate the manly spirit of the Englishman, and the ardour of the philanthropist, in the foregoing verses, it is the missionary feeling, glowing in the following passage, that we most admire, as expressing the only true mode of requiting injured Africa. Let us not think that we have discharged the debt by an act of emancipation.[413] In conferring the boon of liberty, we restore only that of which they ought never to have been deprived. Restitution is not compensation. We have granted compensation to the proprietor, but where is the compensation to the negro? Never will the accumulated wrongs of ages be redressed, till we say to the sable sons of Africa, Behold your God! We have burst the chains from the body, let us now convey to them the tidings of a nobler freedom, a deliverance from a worse captivity than even African bondage and oppression. Let us announce to them that God "hath made of one blood all nations of men that dwell on the face of the earth." Acts xvii. 26. Let their minds be expanded by instruction, and the Bible, that great charter of salvation, be circulated wherever it can be read, that thus Britain may acquire a lasting and an honourable title to their gratitude and love.

Charity.

That Ethiopia shall one day stretch out her hands unto God we have the assurance of a specific prophecy, as well as the general declarations of sacred scripture. "All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee." At what time or in what manner the prophecy will be accomplished, it is not for us to determine. But should it please divine providence that the light of the gospel, through the instrumentality of Britain, should first spring forth from among that people in our own West India colonies, the land of their former servitude and oppression; should they subsequently, with bowels yearning for their own country, see fit to return, seized with a desire to communicate to the land of their nativity that gospel, the power of which they have previously felt for themselves; and should the hitherto inaccessible and unexplored parts of that vast continent thus become evangelised, such an event will furnish one of the most remarkable instances of an over-ruling Power, educing good out of positive evil, ever recorded in the annals of mankind.

We beg to add one more remark. The blacks are considered to be the descendants of Ham, who first peopled Africa. It pleased God to pronounce an awful curse on him and his posterity. "Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be." For the long period of four thousand years has that curse impended over their heads. They have drunk the cup of bitterness to its lowest dregs. We conceive this terrible interdict to be now approaching to its termination. The curse began to be repealed, in part, when the abolition of slavery was first proclaimed by a British parliament. This was the seed-time of the future harvest: the example of Britain cannot be exhibited in vain: other nations must follow that example, or suffer the consequences of their neglect. They must concede the liberty which is the great inherent right of all mankind, or expect to behold it wrested from them amidst scenes of carnage and blood. Policy, justice, and humanity, therefore, require the concession. We have said that the repeal of the curse had begun in part; it will be completed when civil privileges shall be considered to be only the precursors of that more glorious liberty flowing from the communication of the gospel of peace. Then will Africa be raised up from her state of moral degradation, and be elevated to the rank and order of civilized nations. Then will she once more boast of her Cyprians, her Tertullians, and her Augustines; and the voice of the Lord, speaking from his high and holy place, will proclaim to her sable and afflicted sons, "Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord hath arisen upon thee." "There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond, nor free: but Christ is all, and in all." Col. iii. 11.

How sweetly does the muse of Cowper proclaim the blessings of this spiritual liberty!

Winter Morning Walk.

The interesting nature of the subject, and its popularity at the present moment, must plead our excuse for these lengthened remarks and extracts. But we were anxious to prove how much this great cause of humanity was indebted, in the earlier stages of its progress, to the powerful appeals and representations of Cowper.

We now resume the Correspondence.

TO MRS. HILL.[414]

Weston Lodge, March 17, 1788.

My dear Madam,—A thousand thanks to you for your obliging and most acceptable present, which I received safe this evening. Had you known my occasions, you could not possibly have timed it more exactly. The Throckmorton family, who live in our neighbourhood, and who sometimes take a dinner with us, were, by engagement made with them two or three days ago, appointed to dine with us just at the time when your turkey will be in perfection. A turkey from Wargrave, the residence of my friend, and a turkey, as I conclude, of your breeding, stands a fair chance, in my account, to excel all other turkeys; and the ham, its companion, will be no less welcome.

I shall be happy to hear that my friend Joseph has recovered entirely from his late indisposition, which I was informed was gout; a distemper which, however painful in itself, brings at least some comfort with it, both for the patient and those who love him, the hope of length of days, and an exemption from numerous other evils. I wish him just so much of it as may serve for a confirmation of this hope, and not one twinge more.

Your husband, my dear madam, told me, some time since, that a certain library of mine, concerning which I have heard no other tidings these five-and-twenty-years, is still in being.[415] Hue and cry have been made after it in Old Palace-yard, but hitherto in vain. If he can inform a bookless student in what region, or in what nook, his long-lost volumes may be found, he will render me an important service.

I am likely to be furnished soon with shelves, which my cousin of New Norfolk-street is about to send me; but furniture for these shelves I shall not presently procure, unless by recovering my stray authors. I am not young enough to think of making a new collection, and shall probably possess myself of few books hereafter but such as I may put forth myself, which cost me nothing but what I can better spare than money—time and consideration.

I beg, my dear madam, that you will give my love to my friend, and believe me, with the warmest sense of his and your kindness,

Your most obliged and affectionate, W. C.

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.[416]

Weston Lodge, March 17, 1788.

My dear Friend,—The evening is almost worn away while I have been writing a letter, to which I was obliged to give immediate attention. An application from a lady, and backed by you, could not be less than irresistible. The lady, too, a daughter of Mr. Thornton's.[417] Neither are these words of course: since I returned to Homer in good earnest, I turn out of my way for no consideration that I can possibly put aside.

With modern tunes I am unacquainted, and have therefore accommodated my verse to an old one; not so old, however, but that there will be songsters found old enough to remember it. The song is an admirable one for which it was made, and, though political, nearly, if not quite, as serious as mine. On such a subject as I had before me, it seems impossible not to be serious. I shall be happy if it meet with your and Lady Balgonie's approbation.

Of Mr. Bean I could say much; but have only time at present to say that I esteem and love him. On some future occasion I shall speak of him more at large.

We rejoice that Mrs. Newton is better, and wish nothing more than her complete recovery. Dr. Ford is to be pitied.[418] His wife, I suppose, is going to heaven; a journey which she can better afford to take than he to part with her.

I am, my dear friend, with our united love to you all three, most truly yours,

W. C.

TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT.

March 19, 1788.

My dear Friend,—The spring is come, but not, I suppose, that spring which our poets have celebrated. So I judge at least by the extreme severity of the season, sunless skies, and freezing blasts, surpassing all that we experienced in the depth of winter. How do you dispose of yourself in this howling month of March? As for me, I walk daily, be the weather what it may, take bark, and write verses. By the aid of such means as these I combat the north-east wind with some measure of success, and look forward, with the hope of enjoying it, to the warmth of summer.

Have you seen a little volume, lately published, entitled, "The Manners of the Great?" It is said to have been written by Mr. Wilberforce, but whether actually written by him or not, is undoubtedly the work of some man intimately acquainted with the subject, a gentleman, and a man of letters.[419] If it makes the impression on those to whom it is addressed, that may be in some degree expected from his arguments, and from his manner of pressing them, it will be well. But you and I have lived long enough in the world to know that the hope of a general reformation in any class of men whatever, or of women either, may easily be too sanguine.

I have now given the last revisal to as much of my translation as was ready for it, and do not know that I shall bestow another single stroke of my pen on that part of it before I send it to the press. My business at present is with the sixteenth book, in which I have made some progress, but have not yet actually sent forth Patroclus to the battle. My first translation lies always before me; line by line I examine it as I proceed, and line by line reject it. I do not, however, hold myself altogether indebted to my critics for the better judgment that I seem to exercise in this matter now than in the first instance. By long study of him, I am in fact become much more familiar with Homer than at any time heretofore, and have possessed myself of such a taste of his manner, as is not to be attained by mere cursory reading for amusement. But, alas! 'tis after all a mortifying consideration that the majority of my judges hereafter, will be no judges of this. Græcum est, non potest legi, is a motto that would suit nine in ten of those who will give themselves airs about it and pretend to like or to dislike. No matter. I know I shall please you, because I know what pleases you, and I am sure that I have done it.

Adieu! my good friend, Ever affectionately yours, W. C.

Cowper alludes in the following letters, to the progress of his version, and the obstructions to the negro cause.

TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ.

Weston, March 29, 1788.

My dear Friend,—I rejoice that you have so successfully performed so long a journey without the aid of hoofs or wheels. I do not know that a journey on foot exposes a man to more disasters than a carriage or a horse; perhaps it may be the safer way of travelling, but the novelty of it impressed me with some anxiety on your account.

It seems almost incredible to myself that my company should be at all desirable to you, or to any man. I know so little of the world as it goes at present, and labour generally under such a depression of spirits, especially at those times when I could wish to be most cheerful, that my own share in every conversation appears to me to be the most insipid thing imaginable. But you say you found it otherwise, and I will not for my own sake doubt your sincerity: de gustibus non est disputandum, and since such is yours, I shall leave you in quiet possession of it, wishing indeed both its continuance and increase. I shall not find a properer place in which to say, accept of Mrs. Unwin's acknowledgments, as well as mine, for the kindness of your expressions on this subject, and be assured of an undissembling welcome at all times, when it shall suit you to give us your company at Weston. As to her, she is one of the sincerest of the human race, and if she receives you with the appearance of pleasure, it is because she feels it. Her behaviour on such occasions is with her an affair of conscience, and she dares no more look a falsehood than utter one.

It is almost time to tell you, that I have received the books safe; they have not suffered the least detriment by the way, and I am much obliged to you for them. If my translation should be a little delayed in consequence of this favour of yours, you must take the blame on yourself. It is impossible not to read the notes of a commentator so learned, so judicious, and of so fine a taste as Dr. Clarke,[420] having him at one's elbow. Though he has been but few hours under my roof, I have already peeped at him, and find that he will be instar omnium to me. They are such notes exactly as I wanted. A translator of Homer should ever have somebody at hand to say, "That's a beauty," lest he should slumber where his author does not, not only depreciating, by such inadvertency, the work of his original, but depriving perhaps his own of an embellishment, which wanted only to be noticed.

If you hear ballads sung in the streets on the hardships of the negroes in the islands they are probably mine.[421] It must be an honour to any man to have given a stroke to that chain, however feeble. I fear however that the attempt will fail. The tidings which have lately reached me from London concerning it are not the most encouraging. While the matter slept, or was but slightly adverted to, the English only had their share of shame in common with other nations on account of it. But, since it has been canvassed and searched to the bottom, since the public attention has been riveted to the horrible scheme, we can no longer plead either that we did not know it, or did not think of it. Woe be to us if we refuse the poor captives the redress to which they have so clear a right, and prove ourselves in the sight of God and men, indifferent to all considerations but those of gain![422]

Adieu, W. C.

TO LADY HESKETH.

The Lodge, March 31, 1788.

My dearest Cousin,—Mrs. Throckmorton has promised to write to me. I beg that, as often as you shall see her, you will give her a smart pinch, and say, "Have you written to my cousin?" I build all my hopes of her performance on this expedient, and for so doing these my letters, not patent, shall be your sufficient warrant. You are thus to give her the question till she shall answer, "Yes." I have written one more song, and sent it. It is called the "Morning Dream," and may be sung to the tune of Tweed-Side, or any other tune that will suit it, for I am not nice on that subject. I would have copied it for you, had I not almost filled my sheet without it; but now, my dear, you must stay till the sweet sirens of London shall bring it to you, or, if that happy day should never arrive, I hereby acknowledge myself your debtor to that amount. I shall now probably cease to sing of tortured negroes, a theme which never pleased me, but which, in the hope of doing them some little service, I was not unwilling to handle.

If anything could have raised Miss More to a higher place in my opinion than she possessed before, it could only be your information that, after all, she, and not Mr. Wilberforce, is author of that volume. How comes it to pass, that she, being a woman, writes with a force and energy, and a correctness hitherto arrogated by the men, and not very frequently displayed even by the men themselves?

Adieu, W. C.

The object of this valuable treatise is not to attack gross delinquencies, but to show the danger of resting for acceptance on mere outward decorum and general respectability of character, while the internal principle, which can alone elevate the affections of the heart and influence the life, is wanting. We select the following passage as powerfully illustrating this view. Speaking of the rich man, who is represented by our Lord as lifting up his eyes in torments, Mrs. More observes, "He committed no enormities, that have been transmitted to us; for that he dined well and dressed well could hardly incur the bitter penalty of eternal misery. That his expenses were suitable to his station, and his splendour proportioned to his opulence, does not exhibit any objection to his character. Nor are we told that he refused the crumbs which Lazarus solicited: and yet this man, on an authority we are not permitted to question, is represented in a future state as lifting up his eyes, being in torments. His punishment seems to have been the consequence of an irreligious, a worldly spirit; a heart corrupted by the softnesses and delights of life. It was not because he was rich, but because he trusted in riches; or, if even he was charitable, his charity wanted that principle which alone could sanctify it. His views terminated here; this world's good, and this world's applause, were the motives and the end of his actions. He forgot God; he was destitute of piety; and the absence of this great and first principle of human actions rendered his shining deeds, however they might be admired among men, of no value in the sight of God."

Admonitory statements like these are invaluable, and demand the earnest attention of those to whom they apply.

Nor is the next passage less important on the subject of sins of omission.

"It is not less against negative than against actual evil that affectionate exhortation, lively remonstrance, and pointed parable, are exhausted. It is against the tree which bore no fruit, the lamp which had no oil, the unprofitable servant who made no use of his talent, that the severe sentence is denounced, as well as against corrupt fruit, bad oil, and talents ill employed. We are led to believe, from the same high authority, that omitted duties and neglected opportunities will furnish no inconsiderable portion of our future condemnation. A very awful part of the decision, in the great day of account, seems to be reserved merely for carelessness, omissions, and negatives. Ye gave me no meat, ye gave me no drink; ye took me not in, ye visited me not. On the punishment attending positive crimes, as being more naturally obvious, it was not, perhaps, thought so necessary to insist."[423]

This work was the first important appeal in those days, addressed to the fashionable world, and Miss More's previous intercourse with it admirably qualified her to write with judgment and effect.

TO MRS. KING.[424]

Weston Lodge, April 11, 1788.

Dear Madam,—The melancholy that I have mentioned, and concerning which you are so kind as to inquire, is of a kind, so far as I know, peculiar to myself. It does not at all affect the operations of my mind on any subject to which I can attach it, whether serious or ludicrous, or whatsoever it may be; for which reason I am almost always employed either in reading or writing when I am not engaged in conversation. A vacant hour is my abhorrence, because when I am not occupied I suffer under the whole influence of my unhappy temperament. I thank you for the recommendation of a medicine from which you have received benefit yourself; but there is hardly anything that I have not proved, however beneficial it may have been found by others, in my own case utterly useless. I have, therefore, long since bid adieu to all hope from human means,—the means excepted of perpetual employment.

I will not say that we shall never meet, because it is not for a creature who knows not what shall be to-morrow to assert any thing positively concerning the future. Things more unlikely I have yet seen brought to pass, and things which, if I had expressed myself of them at all, I should have said were impossible. But, being respectively circumstanced as we are, there seems no present probability of it. You speak of insuperable hindrances; and I also have hindrances that would be equally difficult to surmount. One is, that I never ride, that I am not able to perform a journey on foot, and that chaises do not roll within the sphere of that economy which my circumstances oblige me to observe. If this were not of itself sufficient to excuse me, when I decline so obliging an invitation as yours, I could mention yet other obstacles. But to what end? One impracticability makes as effectual a barrier as a thousand. It will be otherwise in other worlds. Either we shall not bear about us a body, or it will be more easily transportable than this. In the meantime, by the help of the post, strangers to each other may cease to be such, as you and I have already begun to experience.

It is indeed, madam, as you say, a foolish world, and likely to continue such till the Great Teacher shall himself vouchsafe to make it wiser. I am persuaded that time alone will never mend it. But there is doubtless a day appointed when there shall be a more general manifestation of the beauty of holiness than mankind have ever yet beheld. When that period shall arrive there will be an end of profane representations, whether of heaven or hell, on the stage:—the great realities will supersede them.

I have just discovered that I have written to you on paper so transparent, that it will hardly keep the contents a secret. Excuse the mistake, and believe me, dear madam, with my respects to Mr. King,

Affectionately yours, W. C.

The slow progress of the abolition cause, and the nature of the difficulties are adverted to in the following letter.

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.[425]

Weston, April 19, 1788.

My dear Friend,—I thank you for your last, and for the verses in particular therein contained, in which there is not only rhyme but reason. And yet I fear that neither you nor I, with all our reasoning and rhyming, shall effect much good in this matter. So far as I can learn, and I have had intelligence from a quarter within the reach of such as is respectable, our governors are not animated altogether with such heroic ardour as the occasion might inspire. They consult frequently indeed in the cabinet about it, but the frequency of their consultations in a case so plain as this would be, did not what Shakspeare calls commodity, and what we call political expediency, cast a cloud over it, rather bespeaks a desire to save appearances than to interpose to purpose. Laws will, I suppose, be enacted for the more humane treatment of the negroes; but who shall see to the execution of them? The planters will not, and the negroes cannot. In fact, we know that laws of this tendency have not been wanting, enacted even amongst themselves, but there has been always a want of prosecutors, or righteous judges; deficiencies which will not be very easily supplied. The newspapers have lately told us that these merciful masters have, on this occasion, been occupied in passing ordinances, by which the lives and limbs of their slaves are to be secured from wanton cruelty hereafter. But who does not immediately detect the artifice, or can give them a moment's credit for any thing more than a design, by this show of lenity, to avert the storm which they think hangs over them? On the whole, I fear there is reason to wish, for the honour of England, that the nuisance had never been troubled, lest we eventually make ourselves justly chargeable with the whole offence by not removing it. The enormity cannot be palliated; we can no longer plead that we were not aware of it, or that our attention was otherwise engaged, and shall be inexcusable therefore ourselves if we leave the least part of it unredressed. Such arguments as Pharaoh might have used to justify the destruction of the Israelites, substituting only sugar for bricks, may lie ready for our use also; but I think we can find no better.

We are tolerably well, and shall rejoice to hear that, as the year rises, Mrs. Newton's health keeps pace with it. Believe me, my dear friend,

Affectionately and truly yours, W. C.

TO LADY HESKETH.

The Lodge, May 6, 1788.

My dearest Cousin,—You ask me how I like Smollett's Don Quixote? I answer, Well; perhaps better than any body's: but, having no skill in the original, some diffidence becomes me: that is to say, I do not know whether I ought to prefer it or not. Yet there is so little deviation from other versions which I have seen that I do not much hesitate. It has made me laugh I know immoderately, and in such a case ç'a suffit.

A thousand thanks, my dear, for the new convenience in the way of stowage which you are so kind as to intend me. There is nothing in which I am so deficient as repositories for letters, papers, and litter of all sorts. Your last present has helped me somewhat, but not with respect to such things as require lock and key, which are numerous. A box, therefore, so secured, will be to me an invaluable acquisition. And, since you leave me to my option, what shall be the size thereof, I of course prefer a folio. On the back of the book-seeming box, some artist expert in those matters, may inscribe these words,

Collectanea curiosa,

the English of which is, a collection of curiosities. A title which I prefer to all others, because if I live, I shall take care that the box shall merit it, and because it will operate as an incentive to open that which being locked cannot be opened: for in these cases the greater the baulk the more wit is discovered by the ingenious contriver of it, viz. myself.

The General, I understand by his last letter, is in town. In my last to him I told him news, possibly it will give you pleasure, and ought for that reason to be made known to you as soon as possible. My friend Rowley, who I told you has, after twenty-five years' silence, renewed his correspondence with me, and who now lives in Ireland, where he has many and considerable connexions, has sent to me for thirty subscription papers.[426] Rowley is one of the most benevolent and friendly creatures in the world, and will, I dare say, do all in his power to serve me.

I am just recovered from a violent cold, attended by a cough, which split my head while it lasted. I escaped these tortures all the winter, but whose constitution, or what skin, can possibly be proof against our vernal breezes in England? Mine never were, nor will be.

When people are intimate, we say they are as great as two inkle-weavers, on which expression I have to remark, in the first place, that the word great is here used in a sense which the corresponding term has not, so far as I know, in any other language, and secondly, that inkle-weavers contract intimacies with each other sooner than other people on account of their juxtaposition in weaving of inkle. Hence it is that Mr. Gregson and I emulate those happy weavers in the closeness of our connexion.[427] We live near to each other, and while the Hall is empty are each other's only extraforaneous comfort.

Most truly thine, W. C.

TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.

Weston, May 8, 1788.

Alas! my library—I must now give it up for a lost thing for ever. The only consolation belonging to the circumstance is, or seems to be, that no such loss did ever befall any other man, or can ever befall me again. As far as books are concerned I am

Totus teres atque rotundus,

and may set fortune at defiance. The books, which had been my father's, had, most of them, his arms on the inside cover, but the rest no mark, neither his name nor mine. I could mourn for them like Sancho for his Dapple, but it would avail me nothing.

You will oblige me much by sending me "Crazy Kate." A gentleman last winter promised me both her and the "Lace-maker," but he went to London, that place in which, as in the grave, "all things are forgotten," and I have never seen either of them.[428]

I begin to find some prospect of a conclusion, of the Iliad at least, now opening upon me, having reached the eighteenth book. Your letter found me yesterday in the very fact of dispersing the whole host of Troy, by the voice only of Achilles. There is nothing extravagant in the idea, for you have witnessed a similar effect attending even such a voice as mine, at midnight, from a garret window, on the dogs of a whole parish, whom I have put to flight in a moment.

W. C.

His high sense of the character and qualifications of Lady Hesketh is pleasingly expressed in the following letter, where Mrs. Montagu's coteries in Portman-square are also alluded to.

TO LADY HESKETH.

The Lodge, May 12, 1788.

It is probable, my dearest coz, that I shall not be able to write much, but as much as I can I will. The time between rising and breakfast is all that I can at present find, and this morning I lay longer than usual.

In the style of the lady's note to you I can easily perceive a smatch of her character.[429] Neither men nor women write with such neatness of expression, who have not given a good deal of attention to language, and qualified themselves by study. At the same time it gave me much more pleasure to observe, that my coz, though not standing on the pinnacle of renown quite so elevated as that which lifts Mrs. Montague to the clouds, falls in no degree short of her in this particular; so that, should she make you a member of her academy,[430] she will do it honour. Suspect me not of flattering you, for I abhor the thought; neither will you suspect it. Recollect, that it is an invariable rule with me never to pay compliments to those I love.

Two days, en suite, I have walked to Gayhurst,[431] a longer journey than I have walked on foot these seventeen years. The first day I went alone, designing merely to make the experiment, and choosing to be at liberty to return at whatsoever point of my pilgrimage I should find myself fatigued. For I was not without suspicion that years, and some other things no less injurious than years, viz. melancholy and distress of mind, might by this time have unfitted me for such achievements. But I found it otherwise. I reached the church, which stands, as you know, in the garden, in fifty-five minutes, and returned in ditto time to Weston. The next day I took the same walk with Mr. Powley, having a desire to show him the prettiest place in the country.[432] I not only performed these two excursions without injury to my health, but have by means of them gained indisputable proof that my ambulatory faculty is not yet impaired; a discovery which, considering that to my feet alone I am likely, as I have ever been, to be indebted always for my transportation from place to place, I find very delectable.

You will find in the last Gentleman's Magazine a sonnet, addressed to Henry Cowper, signed T. H. I am the writer of it. No creature knows this but yourself; you will make what use of the intelligence you shall see good.

W. C.

TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.

The Lodge, May 24, 1788.

My dear Friend,—For two excellent prints I return you my sincere acknowledgments. I cannot say that poor Kate resembles much the original, who was neither so young nor so handsome as the pencil has represented her; but she has a figure well suited to the account given of her in "The Task," and has a face exceedingly expressive of despairing melancholy. The Lace-maker is accidentally a good likeness of a young woman, once our neighbour, who was hardly less handsome than the picture twenty years ago; but the loss of one husband, and the acquisition of another, have, since that time, impaired her much; yet she might still be supposed to have sat to the artist.[433]

We dined yesterday with your friend and mine, the most companionable and domestic Mr. C——.[434] The whole kingdom can hardly furnish a spectacle more pleasing to a man who has a taste for true happiness, than himself, Mrs. C——, and their multitudinous family. Seven long miles are interposed between us, or perhaps I should oftener have an opportunity of declaiming on this subject.

I am now in the nineteenth book of the Iliad, and on the point of displaying such feats of heroism performed by Achilles as make all other achievements trivial. I may well exclaim, "O for a Muse of fire!" especially having not only a great host to cope with, but a great river also; much, however, may be done when Homer leads the way. I should not have chosen to have been the original author of such a business, even though all the Nine had stood at my elbow. Time has wonderful effects. We admire that in an ancient, for which we should send a modern bard to Bedlam.

I saw at Mr. C——'s a great curiosity—an antique bust of Paris, in Parian marble. You will conclude that it interested me exceedingly. I pleased myself with supposing that it once stood in Helen's chamber. It was in fact brought from the Levant, and, though not well mended, (for it had suffered much by time,) is an admirable performance.

W. C.

Mr. Bull had urged Cowper once more to employ the powers of his pen, in what he so eminently excelled, the composition of hymns expressive of resignation to the will of God. It is much to be lamented that he here declines what would so essentially have promoted the interests of true religion.

TO THE REV. WILLIAM BULL.[435]

Weston, May 25, 1788.

My dear Friend,—Ask possibilities and they shall be performed; but ask not hymns from a man suffering by despair as I do. I could not sing the Lord's song were it to save my life, banished as I am, not to a strange land, but to a remoteness from his presence, in comparison with which the distance from east to west is no distance, is vicinity and cohesion. I dare not, either in prose or verse, allow myself to express a frame of mind which I am conscious does not belong to me; least of all can I venture to use the language of absolute resignation, lest, only counterfeiting, I should for that very reason be taken strictly at my word, and lose all my remaining comfort. Can there not be found among those translations of Madame Guion somewhat that might serve the purpose? I should think there might. Submission to the will of Christ, my memory tells me, is a theme that pervades them all. If so, your request is performed already; and if any alteration in them should be necessary, I will with all my heart make it. I have no objection to giving the graces of the foreigner an English dress, but insuperable ones to all false pretences and affected exhibitions of what I do not feel.

Hoping that you will have the grace to be resigned most perfectly to this disappointment, which you should not have suffered had it been in my power to prevent it, I remain, with our best remembrances to Mr. Thornton,

Ever affectionately yours, W. C.

TO LADY HESKETH.

The Lodge, May 27, 1788.

My dear Coz.—The General, in a letter which came yesterday, sent me inclosed a copy of my sonnet; thus introducing it.

"I send a copy of verses somebody has written in the Gentleman's Magazine for April last. Independent of my partiality towards the subject, I think the lines themselves are good."

Thus it appears that my poetical adventure has succeeded to my wish, and I write to him by this post, on purpose to inform him that the somebody in question is myself.[436]

I no longer wonder that Mrs. Montagu stands at the head of all that is called learned, and that every critic vails his bonnet to her superior judgment; I am now reading, and have reached the middle of her Essay on the Genius of Shakspeare; a book of which, strange as it may seem, though I must have read it formerly, I had absolutely forgot the existence.[437]

The learning, the good sense, the sound judgment, and the wit displayed in it, fully justify not only my compliment, but all compliments that either have been already paid to her talents, or shall be paid hereafter. Voltaire, I doubt not, rejoiced that his antagonist wrote in English, and that his countrymen could not possibly be judges of the dispute. Could they have known how much she was in the right, and by how many thousand miles the bard of Avon is superior to all their dramatists, the French critic would have lost half his fame among them.

I saw at Mr. Chester's a head of Paris; an antique of Parian marble. His uncle, who left him the estate, brought it, as I understand, from the Levant: you may suppose I viewed it with all the enthusiasm that belongs to a translator of Homer. It is in reality a great curiosity, and highly valuable.

Our friend Sephus[438] has sent me two prints; the Lace-maker and Crazy Kate. These also I have contemplated with pleasure, having, as you know, a particular interest in them. The former of them is not more beautiful than a lace-maker once our neighbour at Olney; though the artist has assembled as many charms in her countenance as I ever saw in any countenance, one excepted. Kate is both younger and handsomer than the original from which I drew, but she is in a good style, and as mad as need be.

How does this hot weather suit thee, my dear, in London? as for me, with all my colonnades and bowers I am quite oppressed by it.

W. C.

TO LADY HESKETH.

The Lodge, June 3, 1788.

My dearest Cousin,—The excessive heat of these last few days was indeed oppressive; but, excepting the languor that it occasioned both in my mind and body, it was far from being prejudicial to me. It opened ten thousand pores, by which as many mischiefs, the effects of long obstruction, began to breathe themselves forth abundantly. Then came an east wind, baneful to me at all times, but following so closely such a sultry season, uncommonly noxious. To speak in the seaman's phrase, not entirely strange to you, I was taken all aback; and the humours which would have escaped, if old Eurus would have given them leave, finding every door shut, have fallen into my eyes. But, in a country like this, poor miserable mortals must be content to suffer all that sudden and violent changes can inflict; and if they are quit for about half the plagues that Caliban calls down on Prospero, they may say, "We are well off," and dance for joy, if the rheumatism or cramp will let them.

Did you ever see an advertisement by one Fowle, a dancing-master of Newport-Pagnel? If not, I will contrive to send it to you for your amusement. It is the most extravagantly ludicrous affair of the kind I ever saw. The author of it had the good hap to be crazed, or he had never produced any thing half so clever; for you will ever observe, that they who are said to have lost their wits have more than other people. It is therefore only a slander, with which envy prompts the malignity of persons in their senses to asperse those wittier than themselves. But there are countries in the world where the mad have justice done them, where they are revered as the subjects of inspiration, and consulted as oracles. Poor Fowle would have made a figure there.

W. C.

In the next letter Cowper declines writing further on the subject of the slave trade: the horrors connected with it are the reasons assigned for this refusal. His past efforts in that cause are the best evidence of his ability to write upon it with powerful effect. The sensitive mind of Cowper shrunk with terror from these appalling atrocities.

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.[439]

Weston Lodge, June 5, 1788.

My dear Friend,—It is a comfort to me that you are so kind as to make allowance for me, in consideration of my being so busy a man. The truth is that, could I write with both hands, and with both at the same time, verse with one and prose with the other, I should not even so be able to despatch both my poetry and my arrears of correspondence faster than I have need. The only opportunities that I can find for conversing with distant friends are in the early hour (and that sometimes reduced to half a one) before breakfast. Neither am I exempt from hindrances, which, while they last, are insurmountable; especially one, by which I have been occasionally a sufferer all my life. I mean an inflammation of the eyes; a malady under which I have lately laboured, and from which I am at this moment only in a small degree relieved. The last sudden change of the weather, from heat almost insupportable to a cold as severe as is commonly felt in midwinter, would have disabled me entirely for all sorts of scribbling, had I not favoured the weak part a little, and given my eyes a respite.

It is certain that we do not live far from Olney, but small as the distance is, it has too often the effect of a separation between the Beans and us. He is a man with whom, when I can converse at all, I can converse on terms perfectly agreeable to myself; who does not distress me with forms, nor yet disgust me by the neglect of them; whose manners are easy and natural, and his observations always sensible. I often, therefore, wish them nearer neighbours.

We have heard nothing of the Powleys since they left us, a fortnight ago, and should be uneasy at their silence on such an occasion, did we not know that she cannot write, and that he, on his first return to his parish after a long absence, may possibly find it difficult. Her we found much improved in her health and spirits, and him, as always, affectionate and obliging. It was an agreeable visit, and, as it was ordered for me, I happened to have better spirits than I have enjoyed at any time since.

I shall rejoice if your friend Mr. Philips, influenced by what you told him of my present engagements, shall waive his application to me for a poem on the slave trade. I account myself honoured by his intention to solicit me on the subject, and it would give me pain to refuse him, which inevitably I shall be constrained to do. The more I have considered it, the more I have convinced myself that it is not a promising theme for verse. General censure on the iniquity of the practice will avail nothing. The world has been overwhelmed with such remarks already, and to particularize all the horrors of it were an employment for the mind both of the poet and his readers, of which they would necessarily soon grow weary. For my own part, I cannot contemplate the subject very nearly without a degree of abhorrence that affects my spirits, and sinks them below the pitch requisite for success in verse. Lady Hesketh recommended it to me some months since, and then I declined it for these reasons, and for others which need not be mentioned here.

I return you many thanks for all your intelligence concerning the success of the gospel in far countries, and shall rejoice in a sight of Mr. Van Lier's letter,[440] which, being so voluminous, I think you should bring with you, when you take your flight to Weston, rather than commit to any other conveyance.

Remember that it is now summer, and that the summer flies fast, and that we shall be happy to see you and yours as speedily and for as long a time as you can afford. We are sorry, truly so, that Mrs. Newton is so frequently and so much indisposed. Accept our best love to you both, and believe me, my dear friend,

Affectionately yours, W. C.

After what I have said on the subject of my writing engagements, I doubt not but you will excuse my transcribing the verses to Mrs. Montagu,[441] especially considering that my eyes are weary with what I have written this morning already. I feel somewhat like an impropriety in referring you to the next "Gentleman's Magazine," but at the present juncture I know not how to do better.

The death of Ashley Cowper, the father of Lady Hesketh and of Miss Theodora Cowper, the object of the poet's fond and early attachment, occurred at this period, and is the subject of the following letters. His reflections on this occasion are interesting and edifying.

TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.

Weston, June 8, 1788.

My dear Friend,—Your letter brought me the very first intelligence of the event it mentions. My last letter from Lady Hesketh gave me reason enough to expect it, but the certainty of it was unknown to me till I learned it by your information. If gradual decline, the consequence of great age, be a sufficient preparation of the mind to encounter such a loss, our minds were certainly prepared to meet it: yet to you I need not say, that no preparation can supersede the feelings of the heart on such occasions. While our friends yet live inhabitants of the same world with ourselves, they seem still to live to us; we are sure that they sometimes think of us; and, however improbable it may seem, it is never impossible that we may see each other once again. But the grave, like a great gulf, swallows all such expectations, and, in the moment when a beloved friend sinks into it, a thousand tender recollections awaken a regret that will be felt in spite of all reasonings, and let our warnings have been what they may. Thus it is I take my last leave of poor Ashley, whose heart towards me was ever truly parental, and to whose memory I owe a tenderness and respect that will never leave me.

W. C.

TO LADY HESKETH.

The Lodge, June 10, 1788.

My dear Coz,—Your kind letter of precaution to Mr. Gregson, sent him hither as soon as chapel service was ended in the evening. But he found me already apprized of the event that occasioned it, by a line from 'Sephus, received a few hours before. My dear uncle's death awakened in me many reflections, which for a time sunk my spirits. A man like him would have been mourned had he doubled the age he reached. At any age his death would have been felt as a loss, that no survivor could repair. And though it was not probable that, for my own part, I should ever see him more, yet the consciousness that he still lived was a comfort to me. Let it comfort us now, that we have lost him only at a time when nature could afford him to us no longer; that, as his life was blameless, so was his death without anguish, and that he is gone to heaven. I know not that human life, in its most prosperous state, can present any thing to our wishes half so desirable as such a close of it.

Not to mingle this subject with others that would ill suit with it, I will add no more at present than a warm hope, that you and your sister[442] will be able effectually to avail yourselves of all the consolatory matter with which it abounds. You gave yourselves, while he lived, to a father, whose life was doubtless prolonged by your attentions, and whose tenderness of disposition made him always deeply sensible of your kindness in this respect, as well as in many others. His old age was the happiest that I have ever known, and I give you both joy of having had so fair an opportunity, and of having so well used it, to approve yourselves equal to the calls of such a duty in the sight of God and man.

W. C.

TO LADY HESKETH.

The Lodge, June 15, 1788.

Although I know that you must be very much occupied on the present most affecting occasion, yet, not hearing from you, I began to be very uneasy on your account, and to fear that your health might have suffered by the fatigue both of body and spirits that you must have undergone, till a letter that reached me yesterday from the General[443] set my heart at rest, so far as that cause of anxiety was in question. He speaks of my uncle in the tenderest terms, such as show how truly sensible he was of the amiableness and excellence of his character, and how deeply he regrets his loss. We have indeed lost one who has not left his like in the present generation of our family, and whose equal, in all respects, no future of it will probably produce. My memory retains so perfect an impression of him, that, had I been painter instead of poet, I could from those faithful traces have perpetuated his face and form with the most minute exactness; and this I the rather wonder at, because some with whom I was equally conversant five-and-twenty years ago have almost faded out of all recollection with me. But he made impression not soon to be effaced, and was in figure, in temper, in manner, and in numerous other respects such as I shall never behold again. I often think what a joyful interview there has been between him and some of his contemporaries who went before him. The truth of the matter is, my dear, that they are the happy ones, and that we shall never be such ourselves till we have joined the party. Can there be anything so worthy of our warmest wishes as to enter on an eternal, unchangeable state, in blessed fellowship and communion with those whose society we valued most, and for the best reasons, while they continued with us? A few steps more through a vain, foolish world, and this happiness will be yours. But be not hasty, my dear, to accomplish thy journey! For of all that live thou art one whom I can least spare; for thou also art one, who shalt not leave thy equal behind thee.

W. C.

The contrast between the awful scenes in nature, and those produced by the passions of men, is finely drawn in the following letter.

TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT.

Weston, June 17, 1788.

My dear Walter,—You think me, no doubt, a tardy correspondent, and such I am, but not willingly. Many hindrances have intervened, and the most difficult to surmount have been those which the east and north-east winds have occasioned, breathing winter upon the roses of June, and inflaming my eyes, ten times more sensible of the inconvenience than they. The vegetables of England seem, like our animals, of a hardier and bolder nature than those of other countries. In France and Italy flowers blow because it is warm, but here in spite of the cold. The season however is somewhat mended at present, and my eyes with it. Finding myself this morning in perfect ease of body, I seize the welcome opportunity to do something at least towards the discharge of my arrears to you.

I am glad that you liked my song, and, if I liked the others myself so well as that I sent you, I would transcribe for you them also. But I sent that, because I accounted it the best. Slavery, and especially negro slavery, because the cruellest, is an odious and disgusting subject. Twice or thrice I have been assailed with entreaties to write a poem on that theme. But, besides that it would be in some sort treason against Homer to abandon him for any other matter, I felt myself so much hurt in my spirits the moment I entered on the contemplation of it, that I have at last determined absolutely to have nothing more to do with it. There are some scenes of horror on which my imagination can dwell not without some complacence. But, then they are such scenes as God, not man, produces. In earthquakes, high winds, tempestuous seas, there is the grand as well as the terrible. But, when man is active to disturb, there is such meanness in the design and such cruelty in the execution, that I both hate and despise the whole operation, and feel it a degradation of Poetry to employ her in the description of it. I hope also, that the generality of my countrymen have more generosity in their nature than to want the fiddle of verse to go before them in the performance of an act to which they are invited by the loudest calls of humanity.

Breakfast calls, and then Homer.

Ever yours, W. C.

Erratum.—Instead of Mr. Wilberforce as author of "Manners of the Great," read Hannah More.

My paper mourns, and my seal. It is for the death of a venerable uncle, Ashley Cowper, at the age of eighty-seven.

Cowper's description of the variations of climate, and their influence on the nerves and constitution, is what most of his readers probably know from frequent experience of their effects.

TO MRS. KING.[444]

The Lodge, June 19, 1788.

My dear Madam,—You must think me a tardy correspondent, unless you have had charity enough for me to suppose that I have met with other hindrances than those of indolence and inattention. With these I cannot charge myself, for I am never idle by choice; and inattentive to you I certainly have not been, but, on the contrary, can safely affirm that every day I have thought on you. My silence has been occasioned by a malady to which I have all my life been subject—an inflammation of the eyes. The last sudden change of weather from excessive heat to a wintry degree of cold occasioned it, and at the same time gave me a pinch of the rheumatic kind; from both which disorders I have but just recovered. I do not suppose that our climate has been much altered since the days of our forefathers, the Picts;[445] but certainly the human constitution in this country has been altered much. Inured as we are from our cradles to every vicissitude in a climate more various than any other, and in possession of all that modern refinement has been able to contrive for our security, we are yet as subject to blights as the tenderest blossoms of spring; and are so well admonished of every change in the atmosphere by our bodily feelings as hardly to have any need of a weather-glass to mark them. For this we are, no doubt, indebted to the multitude of our accommodations; for it was not possible to retain the hardiness that originally belonged to our race, under the delicate management to which for many years we have now been accustomed. I can hardly doubt that a bull-dog or a game-cock might be made just as susceptible of injuries from weather as myself, were he dieted and in all respects accommodated as I am. Or, if the project did not succeed in the first instance, (for we ourselves did not become what we are at once,) in process of time, however, and in a course of many generations, it would certainly take effect. Let such a dog be fed in his infancy with pap, Naples biscuit, and boiled chicken; let him be wrapt in flannel at night, sleep on a good feather-bed, and ride out in a coach for an airing; and if his posterity do not become slight-limbed, puny, and valetudinarian, it will be a wonder. Thus our parents, and their parents, and the parents of both were managed; and thus ourselves; and the consequence is, that instead of being weather-proof, even without clothing, furs and flannels are not warm enough to defend us. It is observable, however, that though we have by these means lost much of our pristine vigour, our days are not the fewer. We live as long as those whom, on account of the sturdiness of their frame, the poets supposed to have been the progeny of oaks. Perhaps too they had little feeling, and for that reason also might be imagined to be so descended. For a very robust athletic habit seems inconsistent with much sensibility. But sensibility is the sine quâ non of real happiness. If, therefore, our lives have not been shortened, and if our feelings have been rendered more exquisite as our habit of body has become more delicate, on the whole perhaps we have no cause to complain, but are rather gainers by our degeneracy.

Do you consider what you do, when you ask one poet his opinion of another? Yet I think I can give you an honest answer to your question, and without the least wish to nibble. Thompson was admirable in description: but it always seemed to me that there was somewhat of affectation in his style, and that his numbers are sometimes not well harmonized. I could wish too, with Dr. Johnson, that he had confined himself to this country; for, when he describes what he never saw, one is forced to read him with some allowance for possible misrepresentation. He was, however, a true poet, and his lasting fame has proved it. Believe me, my dear madam, with my best respects to Mr. King, most truly yours,

W. C.

P. S.—I am extremely sorry that you have been so much indisposed, and hope that your next will bring me a more favourable account of your health. I know not why, but I rather suspect that you do not allow yourself sufficient air and exercise. The physicians call them non-naturals, I suppose to deter their patients from the use of them.

The providence of God and the brevity of human life are subjects of profitable remark in the following letter.

TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ.

Weston, June 23, 1788.

When I tell you that an unanswered letter troubles my conscience in some degree like a crime, you will think me endued with a most heroic patience, who have so long submitted to that trouble on account of yours not answered yet. But the truth is, that I have been much engaged. Homer (you know) affords me constant employment; besides which, I have rather what may be called, considering the privacy with which I have long lived, a numerous correspondence: to one of my friends, in particular, a near and much loved relation, I write weekly, and sometimes twice in a week; nor are these my only excuses: the sudden changes of the weather have much affected me, and especially with a disorder most unfavourable to letter-writing, an inflammation in my eyes. With all these apologies, I approach you once more, not altogether despairing of forgiveness.

It has pleased God to give us rain, without which this part of the country at least must soon have become a desert. The meadows have been parched to a January brown, and we have foddered our cattle for some time, as in the winter. The goodness and power of God are never (I believe) so universally acknowledged as at the end of a long drought. Man is naturally a self-sufficient animal, and, in all concerns that seem to lie within the sphere of his own ability, thinks little or not at all of the need he always has of protection and furtherance from above. But he is sensible that the clouds will not assemble at his bidding, and that, though the clouds assemble, they will not fall down in showers, because he commands them. When therefore at last the blessing descends, you shall hear even in the streets the most irreligious and thoughtless with one voice exclaim, "Thank God!"—confessing themselves indebted to his favour, and willing, at least so far as words go, to give him the glory. I can hardly doubt, therefore, that the earth is sometimes parched, and the crops endangered, in order that the multitude may not want a memento to whom they owe them, nor absolutely forget the power on which all depend for all things.

Our solitary part of the year is over. Mrs. Unwin's daughter and son-in-law have lately spent some time with us. We shall shortly receive from London our old friends the Newtons (he was once minister of Olney), and, when they leave us, we expect that Lady Hesketh will succeed them, perhaps to spend the summer here, and possibly the winter also. The summer indeed is leaving us at a rapid rate, as do all the seasons; and, though I have marked their flight so often, I know not which is the swiftest. Man is never so deluded as when he dreams of his own duration. The answer of the old patriarch to Pharaoh may be adopted by every man at the close of the longest life: "Few and evil have been the days of the years of my pilgrimage." Whether we look back from fifty, or from twice fifty, the past appears equally a dream; and we can only be said truly to have lived, while we have been profitably employed. Alas! then, making the necessary deductions, how short is life! Were men in general to save themselves all the steps they take to no purpose, or to a bad one, what numbers, who are now active, would become sedentary!

Thus I have sermonized through my paper. Living where you live, you can bear with me the better. I always follow the leading of my unconstrained thoughts, when I write to a friend, be they grave or otherwise. Homer reminds me of you every day. I am now in the twenty-first Iliad.

Adieu, W. C.

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.[446]

June 24, 1788.

My dear Friend,—I rejoice that my letter found you at all points so well prepared to answer it according to our wishes. I have written to Lady Hesketh to apprise her of your intended journey hither, and she, having as yet made no assignation with us herself, will easily adjust her measures to the occasion.

I have not lately had an opportunity of seeing Mr. Bean. The late rains, which have revived the hopes of the farmers, have intercepted our communication. I hear, however, that he meets with not a little trouble in his progress towards a reformation of Olney manners; and that the Sabbath, which he wishes to have hallowed by a stricter and more general observation of it, is, through the brutality of the lowest order, a day of more turbulence and riot than any other. At the latter end of last week he found himself obliged to make another trip to the justice, in company with two or three of the principal inhabitants. What passed I have not learned; but I understand their errand to have been, partly at least, to efface the evil impressions made on his worship's mind, by a man who had applied a day or two before for a warrant against the constable; which, however, he did not obtain. I rather fear that the constables are not altogether judicious in the exercise either of their justice or their mercy. Some, who may have seemed proper objects of punishment, they have released, on a promise of better behaviour; and others, whose offence has been personal against themselves, though in other respects less guilty, they have set in the stocks. The ladies, however, and of course the ladies of Silver-End in particular, give them most trouble, being always active on these occasions, as well as clamorous, and both with impunity. For the sex are privileged in the free use of their tongues and of their nails, the parliament having never yet laid them under any penal restrictions; and they employ them accordingly. Johnson, the constable, lost much of his skin, and still more of his coat, in one of those Sunday battles; and had not Ashburner hastened to his aid, had probably been completely stripped of both. With such a zeal are these fair ones animated, though, unfortunately for all parties, rather erroneously.

What you tell me of the effect that the limitation of numbers to tonnage is likely to have on the slave trade, gives me the greatest pleasure.[447] Should it amount, in the issue, to an abolition of the traffic, I shall account it indeed an argument of great wisdom in our youthful minister. A silent and indirect way of doing it, is, I suppose the only safe one. At the same time, in how horrid a light does it place the trade itself, when it comes to be proved by consequences that the mere article of a little elbow-room for the poor creatures in their passage to the islands could not be secured by an order of parliament, without the utter annihilation of it! If so it prove, no man deserving to be called a man, can say that it ought to subsist a moment longer. My writing-time is expended, and breakfast is at hand. With our joint love to the trio, and our best wishes for your good journey to Weston, I remain, my dear friend,

Affectionately yours, W. C.

The next letter contains an interesting incident, recorded of his dog Beau, and the verses composed on the occasion.

TO LADY HESKETH.

The Lodge, June 27, 1788.

For the sake of a longer visit, my dearest Coz, I can be well content to wait. The country, this country at least, is pleasant at all times, and when winter is come, or near at hand, we shall have the better chance for being snug. I know your passion for retirement indeed, or for what we call deedy retirement, and, the F——s intending to return to Bath with their mother, when her visit at the Hall is over, you will then find here exactly the retirement in question. I have made in the orchard the best winter-walk in all the parish, sheltered from the east and from the north-east, and open to the sun, except at his rising, all the day. Then we will have Homer and Don Quixote; and then we will have saunter and chat and one laugh more before we die. Our orchard is alive with creatures of all kinds; poultry of every denomination swarms in it, and pigs, the drollest in the world!