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trio at Olney, when Lady Austen and Mrs. Unwin were the united inspirers of the poet. Yet as the brief and true account which I gave of their separation has been thought to cast a shade of censure on the temper of Mrs. Unwin, which I was far from intending, in justice to the memory of that exemplary and sublime female friend, I here introduce a passage from a letter of Cowper to the Rev. William Unwin, honorable to both the ladies in question, as it describes them in a moment of generous reconciliation.

"I enclose a letter from Lady Austen, which I beg you to return me in your next.We are reconciled. She seized the first opportunity to embrace your mother with tears of the tenderest affection, and I of course am satisfied. We were all a little awkward at first, but now are as easy as ever."

"This letter happens to have no date, but the expressions I have cited from it are sufficient to prove that Mrs. Unwin, instead of having shown an envious infirmity of temper on this occasion, must have conducted herself with a delicate liberality of mind."

We now enter upon the correspondence of the year.

TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.

Olney, Jan. 3, 1784.

My dear William,-Your silence began to be distressing to both your mother and me, and had I not received a letter from you last night, I should have written by this post to inquire after your health. How can it be that you, who are not stationary like me, but often change your situation, and mix with a variety of company, should suppose me furnished with such abundant materials and yourself destitute? I assure you faithfully that I do not find the soil of Olney prolific in the growth of such articles as make letter-writing a desirable employment. No place contributes less to the catalogue of incidents, or is more scantily supplied with anecdotes worth notice.

We have

One parson, one poet, one bellman, one cryer, And the poor poet is our only 'squire.

Guess then if I have not more reason to expect two letters from you than you one from ine. The principal occurrence, and that which affects me most at present, came to pass this moment. The stair-foot door being swelled by the thaw would do anything better than it would open. An attempt to force it upon that office has been attended with such a horrible dissolution of its parts that we were immediately obliged to introduce a chirurgeon, commonly called a carpenter, whose applications we have some hope will cure it of a locked jaw, and heal its numerous fractures.

His medicines are powerful chalybeates and a certain glutinous salve, which he tells me is made of the tails and ears of animals. The consequences however are rather unfa vorable to my present employment, which does not well brook noise, bustle, and interruption.

This being the case, I shall not perhaps be either so perspicuous or so diffuse on the subject of which you desire my sentiments as I should be, but I will do my best. Know then that I have learned long since, of Abbé Raynal, to hate all monopolies as injurious, howsoever managed, to the interests of commerce at large; consequently the charter in question would not at any rate be a favorite of mine. This however is of itself I confess no sufficient reason to justify the resumption of it. But such reasons I think are not wanting. A grant of that kind, it is well known, is always forfeited by the non-performance of the conditions. And why not equally forfeited if those conditions are exceeded; if the design of it be perverted, and its operation extended to objects which were never in the contemplation of the donor? This appears to me to be no misrepresentation of their case, whose charter is supposed to be in danger. It constitutes them a trading company, and gives them an exclusive right to traffic in the East Indies. But it does no more. It invests them with no sovereignty; it does not convey to them the royal prerogative of making war and peace, which the king cannot alienate if he would. But this preroga tive they have exercised, and, forgetting the terms of their institution, have possessed themselves of an immense territory, which they have ruled with a rod of iron, to which it is impossible they should even have a right, unless such a one as it is a disgrace to plead— the right of conquest. The potentates of this country they dash in pieces like a potter's vessel, as often as they please, making the happiness of thirty millions of mankind a consideration subordinate to that of their own emolument, oppressing them as often as it may serve a lucrative purpose, and in no instance, that I have ever heard, consulting their interest or advantage. That government therefore is bound to interfere and to unking these tyrants is to me self-evident. And if, having subjugated so much of this miserable world, it is therefore necessary that we must keep possession of it, it appears to me a duty so binding on the legislature to resume it from the hands of those usurpers, that I should think a curse, and a bitter one, must follow the neglect of it. But, suppose this were done, can they be legally deprived of their charter? In truth I think so. If the abuse and perversion of a charter can amount to a defeasance of it, never were they so grossly palpable as in this instance; never was char

ter so justly forfeited. Neither am I at all afraid that such a measure should be drawn into precedent, unless it could be alleged, as a sufficient reason for not hanging a rogue, that perhaps magistracy might grow wanton in the exercise of such a power, and now and then hang up an honest man for its amusement. When the Governors of the Bank shall have deserved the same severity, I hope they will meet with it. In the meantime I do not think them a whit more in jeopardy because a corporation of plunderers have been brought to justice.

We are well and love you all. I never wrote in such a hurry, nor in such disturbance. Pardon the effects, and believe me yours affectionately, W. C.

TO MRS. HILL.*

Olney, Jan. 5, 1784.

Dear Madam,-You will readily pardon the trouble I give you by this line, when I plead my attention to your husband's convenience in my excuse. I know him to be so busy a man, that I cannot in conscience trouble him with a commission, which I know it is impossible he should have leisure to execute. After all, the labor would devolve upon you, and therefore I may as well address you in the first instance.

I have read and return the books you were so kind as to procure for me. Mr. Hill gave me hopes, in his last, that from the library, to which I have subscribed, I might still be supplied with more. I have not many more to wish for, nor do I mean to make any unreasonable use of your kindness. In about a fortnight I shall be favored, by a friend in Essex, with as many as will serve me during the rest of the winter. In summer I read but little. In the meantime, I shall be much obliged to you for Forster's Narrative of the same voyage, if your librarian has it; and likewise for "Swinburn's Travels" which Mr. Hill mentioned. If they can be sent at once, which perhaps the terms of subscription may not allow, I shall be glad to receive them so. If not, then Forster's first, and Swinburn afterwards and Swinburn, at any rate, if Forster is not to be procured.

Reading over what I have written, I find it perfectly free and easy; so much indeed in that style, that had I not had repeated proofs of your good-nature in other instances, I should have modesty enough to suppress it, and attempt something more civil, and becoming a person who has never had the happiness of seeing you. But I have always observed that sensible people are best pleased with what is natural and unaffected. Nor can I tell you a plainer truth, than that I am, * Private correspondence.

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My dear Friend,-I wish you had more leisure, that you might oftener favor me with a page of politics. The authority of a newspaper is not of sufficient weight to determine my opinions, and I have no other documents to be set down by. I therefore on this subject am suspended in a state of constant scepticism, the most uneasy condition in which the judgment can find itself. But your politics have weight with me, because I know your independent spirit, the justness of your reasonings, and the opportunities you have of information. But I know likewise the urgency and the multiplicity of your concerns; and therefore, like a neglected clock, must be contented to go wrong, except when perhaps twice in the year you shall come to set me right.

Public credit is indeed shaken, and the funds at a low ebb. How can they be otherwise when our western wing is already clipped to the stumps, and the shears at this moment threaten our eastern. Low however as our public stock is, it is not lower than my private one; and this being the article that touches me most nearly at present, I shall be obliged to you if you will have recourse to such ways and means for the replenishment of my exchequer as your wisdom may sug gest and your best ability suffice to execute. The experience I have had of your readiness upon all similar occasions has been very agreeable to me; and I doubt not but upon the present I shall find you equally prompt to serve me. So, Yours ever,

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.

W. C.

Olney, Jan. 18, 1784. My dear Friend,-I too have taken leave of the old year, and parted with it just when you did, but with very different sentiments and feelings upon the occasion. I looked back upon all the passages and occurrences of it as a traveller looks back upon a wilderness, through which he has passed with weariness and sorrow of heart, reaping no other fruit of his labor than the poor consolation that, dreary as the desert was, he has left it all be* Private correspondence.

hind him. The traveller would find even this comfort considerably lessened, if, as soon as he had passed one wilderness, another of equal length and equally desolate should ex. peet him. In this particular, his experience and mine would exactly tally. I should rejoice indeed that the old year is over and gone, if I had not every reason to prophesy a new one similar to it.

I am glad you have found so much hidden treasure; and Mrs. Unwin desires me to tell you, that you did her no more than justice in believing that she would rejoice in it. It is not easy to surmise the reason why the Reverend Doctor, your predecessor, concealed it. Being a subject of a free government, and I suppose full of the divinity most in fashion, he could not fear lest his great riches should expose him to persecution. Nor can I suppose that he held it any disgrace for a dignitary of the church to be wealthy, at a time when churchmen in general spare no pains to become so. But the wisdom of some men has a droll sort of knavishness in it, much like that of the magpie, who hides what he finds with a deal of contrivance, merely for the pleasure of doing it.

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Olney, Jan., 1784.

My dear William,-When I first resolved to write an answer to your last this evening, I had no thought of anything more sublime than prose. But before I began it occured to me that perhaps you would not be displeased with an attempt to give a poetical translation of the lines you sent me. They are so beautiful, that I felt the temptation irresistible. At least, as the French say, it was plus forte que moi; and I accordingly complied. By this means I have lost an hour; and whether I shall be able to fill my sheet before supper is as yet doubtful. But I will do my best.

For your remarks, I think them perfectly just. You have no reason to distrust your taste, or to submit the trial of it to me. You

understand the use and the force of language as well as any man. You have quick feelings and you are fond of poetry. How is it possible then that you should not be a judge of it! I venture to hazard only one alter ation, which, as it appears to me, would amount to a little improvement. The seventh and eighth lines I think I should like better thus

Aspirante levi zephyro et redeunte serenâ Anni temperie fœcundo è cespite surgunt. My reason is, that the word cum is peated too soon. At least my ear does not like it, and when it can be done without in

re

jury to the sense, there seems to be an ele gance in diversifying the expression, as much as possible, upon similar occasions. It discovers a command of phrase, and gives a more masterly air to the piece. If extincta stood unconnected with telis, I should prefer your word micant, to the doctor's vigent. But the latter seems to stand more in direct opposition to that sort of extinction which is effected by a shaft or arrow. In the daytime the stars may be said to die, and in the night to recover their strength. Perhaps the doctor had in his eye that noble line of Gray's,

Hyperion's march they spy, and glitt'ring shafts

of war!

But it is a beautiful composition. It is tender, touching and elegant. It is not easy to do it justice in English, as for example.*

Many thanks for the books, which being most admirably packed came safe. They will furnish us with many a winter evening's amusement. We are glad that you intend to be the carrier back.

We rejoice too that your cousin has remembered you in her will. The money she left to those who attended her hearse, would have been better bestowed upon you: and by this time perhaps she thinks so. Alas! what an inquiry does that thought suggest, and how impossible to make it to any purpose! What are the employments of the departed Has it spirit? and where does it subsist? any cognizance of earthly things? Is it transported to an immeasurable distance; or is it still, though imperceptible to us, conversant with the same scene, and interested in what passes here? How little we know of a state to which we are all destined; and how does the obscurity that hangs over that undiscovered country increase the anxiety we sometimes feel as we are journeying towards it! It is sufficient however for such as you and a few more of my aquaintance to know that in your separate state you will be happy. Provision have no cause to regret aught that you have is made for your reception; and you will

left behind.

I have written to Mr.

My letter

went this morning. How I love and honor that man! For many reasons I dare not tell him how much. But I hate the frigidity of the style in which I am forced to address him. That line of Horace,

Dii tibi divitias dederunt artemque fruendi, was never so applicable to the poet's friend, as to Mr. My bosom burns to immortalize him. But prudence says, “ Forbear!” and, though a poet, I pay respect to her injunctions.†

*The verses appearing again with the original in the next letter, are omitted.

† John Thornton, Esq., is the person here alluded to.

I sincerely give you joy of the good you have unconsciously done by your example and conversation. That you seem to yourself not to deserve the acknowledgment your friend makes of it, is a proof that you do. Grace is blind to its own beauty, whereas such virtues as men may reach without it are remarkable self-admirers. May you make such impressions upon many of your order! I know none that need them more. You do not want my praises of your conduct towards Mr. It is well for him however, and still better for yourself, that you are capable of such a part. It was said of some good man (my memory does not serve me with his name) "do him an ill turn and you make him your friend forever." But it is Christianity only that forms such friends. I wish his father may be duly affected by this instance and proof of your superiority to those ideas of you which he has so unreasonably harbored. He is not in my favor now, nor will be upon any other

terms.

I laughed at the comments you make on your own feelings, when the subject of them was a newspaper eulogium. But it was a laugh of pleasure, and approbation: such indeed is the heart, and so is it made up. There are few that can do good, and keep their own secret, none perhaps without a struggle. Yourself and your friend are no very common instances of the fortitude that is necessary in such a conflict. In former days I have felt my heart beat and every vein throb upon such an occasion. To publish my own deed was wrong. I knew it to But to conceal it seemed like a voluntary injury to myself. Sometimes I could and sometimes I could not succeed. My occasions for such conflicts indeed were not very numerous.

be so.

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Olney, Jan. 25, 1784. My dear Friend,―This contention about East Indian patronage seems not unlikely to avenge upon us by its consequences the mischiefs we have done there. The matter in dispute is too precious to be relinquished by either party; and each is jealous of the influence the other would derive from the possession of it. In a country whose politics have so long rolled upon the wheels of corruption, an affair of such value must prove a weight in either scale, absolutely destructive of the very idea of a balance. Every man has his sentiments upon this subject, and I have mine. Were I constituted umpire of this strife, with full powers to decide it, I would tie a talent of lead about the neck of this patronage, and

plunge it into the depths of the sea. To speak less figuratively, I would abandon all territorial interest in a country to which we can have no right, and which we cannot govern with any security to the happiness of the inhabitants, or without the danger of incurring either perpetual broils, or the most insupportable tyranny at home. That sort of tyranny I mean, which flatters and tantalizes the subject with a show of freedom, and in reality allows him nothing more, bribing to the right and left, rich enough to afford the purchase of a thousand consciences, and consequently strong enough, if it happen to meet with an incorruptible one, to render all the efforts of that man, or of twenty such men, if they could be found, romantic and of no effect. I am the king's most loyal subject, and most obedient humble servant. But, by his majesty's leave, I must acknowledge I am not altogether convinced of the rectitude even of his own measures, or of the simplic ity of his views; and, if I were satisfied that he himself is to be trusted, it is nevertheless palpable that he cannot answer for his successors. At the same time he is my king, and I reverence him as such. I account his prerogative sacred, and shall never wish perity to a party that invades it, and under that pretence of patriotism, would annihilate all the consequence of a character essential to the very being of the constitution. For these reasons I am sorry that we have any dominion in the East; that we have any such emoluments to contend about. Their immense value will probably prolong the dispute, and such struggles having been already made in the conduct of it as have shaken our very foundations, it seems not unreasonable to suppose that still greater efforts and more fatal are behind; and, after all, the decision in favor of either side may be ruinous to the whole. In the meantime, that the Company themselves are but indifferently qualified for the kingship is most deplorably evident. What shall I say therefore? I distrust the court, I suspect the patriots; I put the Company entirely aside, as having forfeited all claim to confidence in such a businsss, and see no remedy of course, but in the annihi lation, if that could be accomplished, of the very existence of our authority in the East Indies. W. C.

Yours, my dear friend,

pros

It was natural for Cowper to indulge in such a reflection, if we consider, that in his time India presented a melancholy scene of rapine and corruption. It used to be said by Mr. Burke, that every man became unbaptized in going to India, and that, should it please Providence, by some unforeseen dispensation, to deprive Great Britain of her Indian empire, she would leave behind no memorial but the

evidences of her ambition, and the traces of her desolating wars.

Happily we have lived to see a great moral revolution, and England has at length redeemed her character. She has ennobled the triumphs of her arms, by making them subservient to the introduction of the Gospel; and seems evidently destined by Providence to be the honored instrument of evangelizing the nations of the East. Already the sacred Scriptures have been translated, in whole or in part, into nearly forty of the Oriental languages or dialects. Schools have been established, and are rapidly multiplying in the three presidencies. The apparently insurmountable barrier of caste is giving way, and the great fabric of Indian superstition is erumbling into dust, while on its ruins will arise the everlasting empire of righteousness

and truth.

The following lines, written by Dr. Jortin, to which we subjoin Cowper's translation, were inclosed in the last letter.

IN BREVITATEM VITE SPATII, HOMINIBUS
CONCESSI.

Hei mihi! Lege ratâ sol occidit atque resurgit,
Lunaque mutatæ reparat dispendia formæ,
Astraque, purpurei telis extincta diei,
Rursus nocte vigent. Humiles telluris alumni,
Graminis herba virens, et florum picta propago,
Quos crudelis hyems lethali tabe peredit,
Cum zephyri vox blanda vocat, rediitque sereni
Temperies anni, foecundo è cespite surgunt.
Nos domini rerum. nos, magna et pulchra minati,
Cun breve ver vitæ robustaque transiit ætas,
Deficimus; nec nos ordo revolubilis auras
Reddit in ætherias, tumuli neque claustra resolvit.

ON THE SHORTNESS OF HUMAN LIFE.

Suns that set, and moons that wane,
Rise, and are restored again.
Stars, that orient day subdues,
Night at her return renews.
Herbs and flowers, the beauteous birth
Of the genial womb of earth,
Suffer but a transient death
From the winter's cruel breath.
Zephyr speaks; serener skies
Warn the glebe, and they arise.
We, alas! earth's haughty kings,
We, that promise mighty things.
Losing soon life's happy prime,
Droop, and fade, in little time.
Spring returns, but not our bloom,
Sull tis winter in the tomb.

as I was obliged to acquiesce in, being suggested by a jealousy you felt, "lest your spirit should be betrayed into acrimony, in writing upon such a subject." I doubt not you have sufficiently guarded that point; and indeed, at the time I could not discover that you had failed in it. I have busied myself this morning in contriving a Greek title, and in seeking a motto. The motto you mention is certainly apposite. But I think it an objection that it has been so much in use; almost every writer that has claimed a liberty to think for himself, upon whatever subject, having chosen it. I therefore send you one which I never saw in that shape yet, and which appears to me equally apt and proper. The Greek word deapos, which signifies literally a shackle, may figuratively serve to express those chains which bigotry and prejudice cast upon the mind. It seems therefore, to speak like a lawyer, no misnomer of your book to call it

Μισόδεσμος.

The following pleases me most of all the mottos I have thought of. But with respect both to that and the title you will use your pleasure.

Querelis
Haud justis assurgis, et irrita jurgia jactas.
EN. X. 94.

From the little I have seen, and the much I have heard, of the manager of the Review you mention, I cannot feel even the smallest push of a desire to serve him in the capacity of a poet. Indeed I dislike him so much, that, had I a drawer full of pieces fit for his purpose, I hardly think I should contribute to his collection. It is possible too that I may live to be once more a publisher myself; in which case, I should be glad to find myself in possession of any such original pieces as might decently make their appearance in a volume of my own. At present, however, I have nothing that would be of use to him, nor have I many opportunities of composing, Sunday being the only day in the week which we spend alone,

I am at this moment pinched for time, but was desirous of proving to you with what alacrity my Greek and Latin memory are always ready to obey you, and therefore, by the first post, have to the best of my ability complied with your request.

Believe me, my dear friend,

Affectionately yours, W. C.

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.

Olney, Feb., 1784. My dear Friend,-I am glad that you have finished a work, of which I well remember the beginning, and which I was sorry you thought it expedient to discontinue.* Your reason for not proceeding was, however, such

The "Review of Ecclesiastical History."

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.

Olney, Feb. 10, 1784.

My dear Friend,-The morning is my writing time, and in the morning I have no spirits. So much the worse for my corre

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