The following letter contains some particuars relative to his version of Homer. TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT. Olney, July 4, 1786. I rejoice, my dear friend, that you have at last received my proposals, and most cordially thank you for all your labors in my service. I have friends in the world, who, knowing that I am apt to be careless when left to myself, are determined to watch over me with a jealous eye upon this occasion. The consequence will be, that the work will be better executed, but more tardy in the production. To them I owe it, that my translation, as fast as it proceeds, passes under the revisal of a most accurate discerner of all blemishes. I know not whether I told you before, or now tell you for the first time, that I am in the hands of a very extraordinary person. He is intimate with my bookseller, and voluntarily offered his service. I was at first doubtful whether to accept it or not, but, finding that my friends abovesaid were not to be satisfied on any other terms, though myself a perfect stranger to the man and his qualifications, except as he was recommended by Johnson, I at length consented, and have since found great reason to rejoice that I did. I called him an extraordinary person, and such he is. For he is not only versed in Homer, and accurate in his knowledge of the Greek to a degree that entitles him to that appellation; but, though a foreigner, is a perfect master of our language, and has exquisite taste in English poetry. By his assistance I have improved many passages, supplied many oversights, and corrected many mistakes, such as will of course escape the most diligent and attentive laborer in such a work. I ought to add, because it affords the best assurance of his zeal and fidelity, that he does not toil for hire, nor will accept of any premium, but has entered on this business merely for his amusement. In the last instance, my sheets will pass through the hands of our old schoolfellow Colman, who has engaged to correct the press, and inake any little alterations that he may see expedient. With all this precaution, little as I intended it once, I am now well satisfied. Experience has convinced me that other eyes than my own are necessary, in order that so long and arduous a task may be finished as it ought, and may neither discredit me nor mortify and disappoint my friends. You, who I know interest yourself much and deeply in my success, will, I dare say, be satisfied with it too. Pope had many aids, and he who follows Pope ought not to walk alone. Though I announce myself by my very undertaking to be one of Homer's most enraptured admirers, I am not a blind one. PerLaps the speech of Achilles, given in my specimen, is, as you hint, rather too much in the moralizing strain to suit so young a man and of so much fire. But, whether it be or not, in the course of the close application that I am forced to give my author I discover inadvertences not a few; some perhaps that have escaped even the commentators themselves, or perhaps, in the enthusiasm of their idolatry, they resolved that they should pass for beauties. Homer, however, say what they will, was man; and in all the works of man, especially in a work of such length and variety, many things will of necessity occur that might have been better. Pope and Addison had a Dennis, and Dennis, if I mistake not, held up as he has been to scorn and detestation, was a sensible fellow, and passed some censures upon both those writers, that, had they been less just, would have hurt them less. Homer had his Zoilus, and perhaps, if we knew all that Zoilus said, we should be forced to acknowledge that, sometimes at least, he had reason on his side. But it is dangerous to find any fault at all with what the world is determined to esteem faultless. I rejoice, my dear friend, that you enjoy some composure and cheerfulness of spirits; may God preserve and increase to you so great a blessing! I am affectionately and truly yours, W. C. Cowper again resumes the subject of his painful dispensation, in the following letter to Newton. TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.* Olney, Aug. 5, 1786. My dear Friend,-You have heard of our intended removal. The house that is to receive us is in a state of preparation, and, when finished, will be both smarter and more commodious than our present abode. But the circumstance that recommends it chiefly is its situation. Long confinement in the winter, and, indeed, for the most part in the autumn too, has hurt us both. A gravel-walk, thirty yards long, affords but indifferent scope to the locomotive faculty: yet it is all that we have had to move in for eight months in the year, during thirteen years that I have been a prisoner. Had I been confined in the Tower, the battlements of it would have furnished me with a larger space. well, that there was a time when I was happy at Olney; and I am now as happy at Olney as I expect to be anywhere without the presence of God. Change of situation is with me no otherwise an object than as both Mrs. Unwin's health and mine may happen to be concerned in it. A fever of the slow and spirit-oppressing kind seems to belong to all, * Private correspondence. You say ble of its value. She leaves nothing unsaid, nothing undone, that she thinks will be conducive to our well-being; and, so far as she is concerned, I have nothing to wish but that I could believe her sent hither in mercy to myself,—then I should be thankful. I am, my dear friend, with Mrs. Unwin's love to Mrs. N. and yourself, hers and yours, W. C. as ever, Having so recently considered the peculiar circumstances of Cowper's depression, we shall not further advert to it than to state, on the authority of John Higgins, Esq., of Turvey, who, at that time, enjoyed frequent oppor tunities of observing his manner and habits, that there was no perceptible appearance of his laboring under so oppressive a malady. On the contrary, his spirits, as far as outward appearances testified, were remarkably cheerful, and sometimes even gay and sportive. In a letter to Mrs. King, which will subse quently appear, will be found a remark to the same effect. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. except the natives, who have dwelt in Olney many years; and the natives have putrid fevers. Both they and we, I believe, are immediately indebted for our respective maladies to an atmosphere encumbered with raw vapors, issuing from flooded meadows; and we in particular, perhaps, have fared the worse for sitting so often, and sometimes for months, over a cellar filled with water.— These ills we shall escape in the uplands; and, as we may reasonably hope, of course, their consequences. But, as for happiness, he that has once had communion with his Maker, must be more frantic than ever I was yet, if he can dream of finding it at a distance from Him. I no more expect happiness at Weston than here, or than I should expect it in company with felons and outlaws in the hold of a ballast-lighter. Animal spirits, however, have their value, and are especially desirable to him who is condemned to carry a burthen, which, at any rate, will tire him, but which, without their aid, cannot fail to crush him. The dealings of God with me are to myself utterly unintelligible. I have never met, either in books or in conversation, with an experience at all similar to my own. More than a twelvemonth has passed since I began to hope that, having walked the whole breadth of the bottom of this Red Sea, I was beginning to climb the opposite shore, and I prepared to sing the song of Moses. But I have been disappointed; those hopes have been blasted; those comforts have been wrested from me. I could not be so duped, even by the arch-enemy himself, as to be made to question the divine nature of them; but I have been made to believe, (which, you will say, is being duped still more) that God gave them to me in derision and took them away in vengeance. Such, however, is, and has been, my persuasion many a long day, and when I shall think on that subject more comfortably, or, as you will be inclined to tell me, more rationally and scripturally, I know not. In the meantime, I embrace with alacrity every alleviation of my case, and with the more alacrity, because whatsoever proves a relief of my distress is a cordial to Mrs. Unwin, whose sympathy with me, through the whole of it, has been such that, despair excepted, her burthen has been as heavy as mine. Lady Hesketh, by her affectionate behavior, the cheerfulness of her conversation, and the constant sweetness of her temper, We are likely to be very happy in our conhas cheered us both, and Mrs. Unwin not nexion with the Throckmortons. His reserve less than me. By her help we get change of and mine wear off; and he talks with great air and of scene, though still resident at Ol-pleasure of the comfort that he proposes to ney, and by her means have intercourse with some families in this country with whom, but for her, we could never have been acquainted. Her presence here would, at any time, even in my happiest days, have been comfort to me, but in the present day I am doubly sensi Olney, Aug. 24. 1786. My dear Friend,—I catch a minute by the tail and hold it fast while I write to you. The moment it is fled I must go to breakfast. I am still occupied in refining and polishing, and shall this morning give the finishing hand to the seventh book. Fdoes me the honor to say that the most difficult and most interesting parts of the poem are admirably rendered. But, because he did not express himself equally pleased with the more pedestrian parts of it, my labor therefore has been principally given to the dignification of them; not but that I have retouched considerably, and made better still the best. In short, I hope to make it all of a piece, and shall exert myself to the utmost to secure that desirable point. A story-teller, so very circumstantial as Homer, must of necessity present us often with much matter in itself capable of no other embellishment than purity of diction and har mony of versification can give to it. Hic labor, hoc opus est. For our language, unless it be very severely chastised, has not the terse ness, nor our measure the music of the Greek. But I shall not fail through want of industry. himself from our winter evening conversations. His purpose seems to be that we should spend them alternately with each othLady Hesketh transcribes for me at present. When she is gone, Mrs. Throckmorton takes up that business, and will be er. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. My dear Friend,--You are my mahogany box, with a slip in the lid of it, to which I commit my productions of the lyric kind, in perfect confidence that they are safe, and will go no further. All who are attached to the jingling art have this peculiarity, that they would find no pleasure in the exercise, had they not one friend at least to whom they might publish what they have composed. If you approve my Latin, and your wife and sister my English, this, together with the approbation of your mother, is fame enough for me. He who cannot look forward with comfort must find what comfort he can in looking backward. Upon this principle I the other day sent my imagination upon a trip thirty years behind me. She was very obedient and very swift of foot, presently performed her journey, and at last set me down in the sixth form at Westminster. I fancied myself once more a school-boy, a period of life in which, if I had never tasted true happiness, I was at least equally unacquainted with its contrary. No manufacturer of waking dreams ever succeeded better in his employment than I do. I can weave such a piece of tapestry, in a few minutes, as not only has all the charms of reality, but is embellished also with a variety of beauties, which, though they never existed, are more captivating than any that ever did :-accordingly, was a school-boy, in high favor with the master, received a silver groat for my exercise, and had the pleasure of seeing it sent from form to form, for the admiration of all who were able to understand it. Do you wish to see this highly applauded performance? It follows on the other side. [Torn off.]* I By way of compensation, we subjoin some *This jeu d'esprit has never been found, notwithstand ing the most diligent inquiry. verses addressed to a young lady, at the request of Mr. Unwin, to whom he thus writes: 66 "I have endeavored to comply with your request, though I am not good at writing upon a given subject. Your mother however comforts me by her approbation, and I steer myself in all that I produce by her judgment If she does not understand me at the first reading, I am sure the lines are obscure and always alter them; if she laughs, I know it is not without reason; and if she says, "That's well, it will do," I have no fear lest anybody else should fine fault with it. She is my lord chamberlain, who licenses all [ write. It is remarkable, that the laudable efforts which are now making to enforce the better observance of the Lord's day, to diminish the temptations to perjury by the unnecessary multiplication of oaths, and to arrest the progress of the vice of drunkenness, appear from the following letter to have been anticipated nearly fifty years since, by the Rev. William Unwin. Deeply impressed with a sense of the extent and enormity of these national sins, his conscientious mind (always seeking opportunities for doing good) led him to urge the employment of Cowper's pen in the correction of these evils. What he suggested, as we believe, was as follows, viz., to draw up a memorial or representation on this subject to the bench of bishops, as the constituted guardians of public morals, and thus to call forth their united exertions; secondly, to awaken the public mind to the magnitude of these crimes, and, finally, to obtain some legislative enactment for their prevention. We now insert Cowper's reply to the proposition of his friend Mr. Unwin. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. My dear Friend, I am sensibly mortified at finding myself obliged to disappoint you: but, though I have had many thoughts upon the subjects you propose to my consideration, I have had none that have been favorable to the undertaking. I applaud your pur are sufficient to deter the generality of mankind. Still there are men always raised up by the providence of God. in his own appointed time-endowed from above with qualifications necessary for great enterprises no toil can weary, and which no opposition can divert from its purpose, because they are inwardly supported by the integrity of their motives, and by a deep conviction of the importance of their object. To men of this ethereal stamp, trials are but an in│centive to exertion, because they never fail to see through those besetting difficulties, which obstruct the progress of all good undertakings, the final accomplishment of all their labors. pose, for the sake of the principle from which it springs, but I look upon the evils you mean to animadvert upon as too obstinate and inveterate ever to be expelled by the means you mention. The very persons to whom you would address your remonstrance-distinguished too by a perseverance that are themselves sufficiently aware of their enormity; years ago, to my knowledge, they were frequently the topics of conversations at polite tables; they have been frequently mentioned in both houses of parliament; and, I suppose, there is hardly a member of either who would not immediately assent to the necessity of a reformation, were it proposed to him in a reasonable way. But there it stops; and there it will forever stop, till the majority are animated with a zeal in which they are at present deplorably defective. A religious man is unfeignedly shocked when he reflects upon the prevalence of such crimes; a moral man must needs be so in a degree, and will affect to be much more so than he is. But how many do you suppose there are among our worthy representatives that come under either of these descriptions? If all were such, yet to new model the police of the country, which must be done in order to make even unavoidable perjury less frequent, were a task they would hardly undertake, on account of the great difficulty that would attend it. Government is too much interested in the consumption of malt liquor to reduce the number of venders. Such plausible pleas may be offered in defence of travelling on Sundays, especially by the trading part of the world, as the whole bench of bishops would find it difficult to overrule. And with respect to the violation of oaths, till a certain name is more generally respected than it is at present, however such persons as yourself may be grieved at it, the legislature are never likely to lay it to heart. I do not mean, nor would by any means attempt, to discourage you in so laudable an enterprise, but such is the light in which it appears to me, that I do not feel the least spark of courage qualifying or prompting me to embark in it myself. An exhortation therefore written by me, by hopeless, desponding me, would be flat, insipid, and uninteresting; and disgrace the cause instead of serving it. If, after what I have said, however, you still retain the same sentiments, Macte esto virtute tuâ, there is nobody better qualified than yourself, and may your success prove that I despaired of it with-fanation, and the claims of the revenue be out a reason. Adieu, My dear friend. W. C. Cowper, it seems, declined his friend's proposal, and was by no means sanguine in his hopes of a remedy. The reasons he assigns Let no man despair of success in a righteous cause. Let him well conceive his plan and mature it: let him gain all the aid that can be derived from the counsel of wise and reflecting minds; and, above all, let him implore the illuminating influences of that Holy Spirit, which can alone impart what all want, the wisdom that is from above," which is "pure, peaceable, gentle, and full of good fruits;" let him be simple in his view, holy in his purpose, zealous, prudent, and persevering in his pursuit; and we feel no hesitation in saying, that man will be blessed in his deed." There are no difficulties, if his object be practicable, and prosecuted in a right spirit, that he may not hope to conquer; no corrupt passions of men over which he may not finally triumph, because there is a Divine Power that can level the highest mountains and exalt the lowest valleys, and because it is recorded for our consolation and instruction: "And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light, to go by day and night. He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people.”* With respect to the more immediate subject of Cowper's letter, so far as it is applica ble to modern times, we must confess that we are sanguine in our hopes of improvement, founded on the increasing moral spirit of the times, and the Divine agency, now so visibly interposing in the affairs of men. Every abuse will progressively receive its appropriate and counteracting remedy. The Lord's day will be rescued from gross pro compelled to yield to the weight and author. "The excise is fattened with the rich result * Exodus, xiii. 21, 22. Touch'd by the Midas finger of the state, We know not to what event the following letter refers, as it is without any date to guide us. It may probably relate to the period of Lord George Gordon's riots. We insert it as we find it.* TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. not here mentioned, was entitled the Ros ciad, containing strictures on the theatrical performers of that day, who trembled at his censures, or were elated by his praise. He has passed along the stream, and has ceased to be read, though once a popular writer. It is much to be lamented that his habits were irregular, his domestic duties violated, and his life at length shortened by intemperance. The reader may form an estimate of his poetical pretensions from the judg ment here passed upon them by Cowper. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. My dear William,-How apt we are to Though we live in a nook, and the world deceive ourselves where self is in question! is quite unconscious that there are any such You say I am in your debt, and I accounted beings in it as ourselves, yet we are not un-you in mine: a mistake to which you must concerned about what passes in it. The pres- attribute my arrears, if indeed I owe you ent awful crisis, big with the fate of Eng-any, for I am not backward to write where land, engages much of our attention. The the uppermost thought is welcome. action is probably over by this time, and though we know it not, the grand question is decided, whether the war shall roar in our once peaceful fields, or whether we shall still only hear of it at a distance. I can compare the nation to no similitude more apt than that of an ancient castle, that had been for day's assaulted by the battering-ram. It was long before the stroke of that engine made any sensible impression, but the continual repetition at length communicated a slight tremor to the wall; the next, and the next, and the next blow increased it. Another shock puts the whole mass in motion, from the top to the foundation: it bends forward, and is every moment driven farther from the perpendicular; till at last the decisive blow is given, and down it comes. Every million that has been raised within the last century, has had an effect upon the constitution like that of a blow from the aforesaid ram upon the aforesaid wall. The impulse becomes more and more important, and the impression it makes is continually augmented; unless therefore something extraordinary intervenes to prevent it-you will find the consequence at the end of my simile. Yours, W. C. I am obliged to you for all the books you have occasionally furnished me with: I did not indeed read many of Johnson's Classies--those of established reputation are so fresh in my memory, though many years have intervened since I made them my companions, that it was like reading what I read yesterday over again; and, as to the minor Classics, I did not think them worth reading at all. I tasted most of them, and did not like them: it is a great thing to be indeed a poet, and does not happen to more than one man in a century. Churchill, the great Churchill, deserved the name of poet-I have read him twice, and some of his pieces three times over, and the last time with more pleasure than the first. The pitiful scribbler of his life seems to have undertaken that task, for which he was entirely unqualified, merely because it afforded him an opportunity to traduce him. He has inserted in it but one anecdote of consequence, for which he refers you to a novel, and introduces the story with doubts about the truth of it. But his barrenness as a biographer I could forgive, if the simpleton had not thought himself a judge of his writings, and, under the erroneous influence of that thought informs his reader that Gotham, Independence, causes of his reputation have been the occasion of its decline. His productions are founded on the popular yet evanescent topics of the time, which have ceased to create interest. He who wishes to survive in the mem commanding genins, but be careful to employ it on subjects of abiding importance. His life was characterised The letter which we next insert, is curious and interesting, as it contains a critique on the works of Churchill, whose style Cow-ory of future ages must possess, not only the attribute of per's is supposed to resemble, in its nervous strength and pungency. He calls him," the great Churchill." One of his productions, * Men who are of sufficient celebrity to entitle their letters to the honor of future publication would do well in never omitting to attach a date to them. The neglect of this precaution, on the part of the Rev. Legh Richmend. led to much perplexity, * Cowper was an admirer of Churchill, and is thought to have formed his style on the anodel of that writer. The But he is now no longer the great Churchill." by singular imprudence, and by habits of gross vice and intemperance. A preacher by profession, and a rake in practice, he abandoned the church, or rather was compelled to resign its functions. Gifted with a vigorous fancy, and superior powers, he prostituted them to the purposes of political faction, and became the associate and friend of Wilkes. A bankrupt, at length, both in fortune and constitution, he was seized with a fever while paying a visit to Mr. Wilkes, at Boulogne: and terminated his brilliant but guilty career at the early age of thirty-four. |