who was sent to lead me out of the wilderness into the pasture where the chief Shepherd feeds his flock, and felt my sentiments of affectionate friendship for you the same as ever.* But one thing was still wanting, and that thing the crown of all. I shall find it in God's time, if it be not lost forever. When I say this, I say it trembling; for at what time soever comfort shall come, it will not come without its attendant evil; and, whatever good thing may occur in the interval, I have sad forebodings of the event, having learned by experience that I was born to be persecuted with peculiar fury, and assuredly believing, that, such as my lot has been, it will be so to the end. This belief is connected in my mind with an observation I have often made, and is perhaps founded in great part upon it: that there is a certain style of dispensations maintained by Providence in the dealings of God with every man, which, however the incidents of his life may vary, and though he may be thrown into many different situations, is never exchanged for another. The style of dispensation peculiar to myself has hitherto been that of sudden, violent, unlooked-for change. When I have thought myself falling into the abyss, I have been caught up again; when I have thought myself on the threshold of a happy eternity, I have been thrust down to hell. The rough and the smooth of such a lot, taken together, should perhaps have taught me never to despair; but, through an unhappy propensity in my nature to forebode the worst, they have on the contrary operated as an admonition to me never to hope. A firm persuasion that I can never durably enjoy a comfortable state of mind, but must be depressed in proportion as I have been elevated, withers my joys in the bud, and, in a manner, entombs them before they are born; for I have no expectation but of sad vicissitude, and ever believe that the last shock of all will be fatal. parish in vestry on the subject. Mr. Bean, attacked so suddenly, consented, but afterwards repented that he had done so, assured as he was that he should be out-voted. There seemed no remedy but to apprise them beforehand that he would meet them indeed, but not with a view to have the question decided by a majority: that he would take that opportunity to make his allegations against each of the houses in question, which if they could refute, well: if not, they could no longer reasonably oppose his measures.— This was what he came to submit to my opinion. I could do no less than approve it; and he left me with a purpose to declare his mind to them immediately. I beg that you will give my affectionate respects to Mr. Bacon, and assure him of my sincere desire that he should think himself perfectly at liberty respecting the mottoes, to choose one or to reject both, as likes him best. I wish also to be remembered with much affection to Mrs. Cowper, and always rejoice to hear of her well-being. Believe me, as I truly am, my dear friend, most affectionately yours, TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. W. C. Weston, Sept. 11, 1788. My dear Friend,-Since your departure I have twice visited the oak, and with an intention to push my inquiries a mile beyond it, where it seems I should have found another oak, much larger and much more respectable than the former; but once I was hindered by the rain, and once by the sultriness of the day. This latter oak has been known by the name of Judith many ages, and is said to have been an oak at the time of the Conquest.* If I have not an opportunity to reach it before your arrival here, we will attempt that exploit together, and even if I Mr. Bean has still some trouble with his should have been able to visit it ere you come, parishioners. The suppression of five public- I shall yet be glad to do so, for the pleasure houses is the occasion. He called on me of extraordinary sights, like all other pleas yesterday morning for advice; though, dis-ures, is doubled by the participation of a creet as he is himself, he has little need of such council as I can give him. who is subtle as a dozen foxes, met him on Sunday, exactly at his descent from the pulpit, and proposed to him a general meeting of the * It was a singular delusion under which Cowper labored, and seems to be inexplicable; but it is not less true that, for many years, he doubted the identity of Mr. Newton. When we see the powers of a great mind liable to such instances of delusion, and occasionally suffering an entire eclipse, how irresistibly are we led to exclaim, "Lord, what is man!" The late Rev. H. Colbourne Ridley, the excellent vicar of Hambleden, near Henley-on-Thames, distinguished for his parochial plans and general devotedness to his professional duties, once observed that the fruit of all his labors, during a residence of five-and-twenty years, was destroyed in one single year by the introduction of beer-houses, and their demoralizing effects. friend. You wish for a copy of my little dog's eulo * This celebrated oak, which is situated in Yardley Chase, near Lord Northampton's residence at Costle sion for displaying all the graces of his rich poetical of the work. In the meantime we extract the following fancy. The poem will be inserted in a subsequent part lines from "The Task," to show how the descriptive powers of Cowper were awakened by this favente and inspiring subject. Ashby, has furnished the muse of Cowper with an occa "The oak Thrives by the rude concussion of the storm: More fixed below, the more disturb'd above.” gium, which I will therefore transcribe, but by so doing I shall leave myself but scanty room for prose. I shall be sorry if our neighbors at the Hall should have left it, when we have the pleasure of seeing you. I want you to see them soon again, that a little consuetudo may wear off restraint; and you may be able to improve the advantage you have already gained in that quarter. I pitied you for the fears which deprived you of your uncle's company, and the more having suffered so much by those fears myself. Fight against that vicious fear, for such it is, as strenuously as you can. It is the worst enemy that can attack a man destined to the forum-it ruined me. To associate as much as possible with the most respectable company, for good sense and good breeding is, I believe the only, at least I am sure it is the best remedy. The society of men of pleasure will not cure it, but rather leaves us more exposed to its influence in company of better persons. Now for the " Dog and the Water-Lily."* W. Č. TO MRS. KING.t Weston Lodge, Sept. 25, 1788. My dearest Madam,-How surprised was I this moment to meet a servant at the gate, who told me that he came from you. He could not have been more welcome unless he had announced yourself. I am charmed with your kindness, and with all your elegant presents; so is Mrs. Unwin, who begs me in particular to thank you warmly for the housewife, the very thing she had just begun to want. In the firescreen you have sent me an enigma which at present I have not the ingenuity to expound; but some muse will help me, or I shall meet with somebody able to instruct me. In all that I have seen besides, for that I have not yet seen, I admire both the taste and the execution. A toothpick case I had; but one so large, that no modern waistcoat pocket could possibly contain it. It was some years since the Dean of Durham's, for whose sake I valued it, though to me useless. Yours is come opportunely to supply the deficiency, and shall be my constant companion to its last thread. The cakes and apples we will eat, remembering who sent them, and when I say this, I will add also, that when we have neither apples nor cakes to eat, we will still remember you. What the MS. poem can be, that you suppose to have been written by me, I am not able to guess; and since you will not allow that I have guessed your person well, am become shy of exercising conjecture on any meaner subject. Perhaps they may be some This has already been inserted. ↑ Private correspondence. mortuary verses, which I wrote last year, at the request of a certain parish-clerk. If not, and you have never seen them, I will send you them hereafter. You have been at Bedford. Bedford is but twelve miles from Weston. When you are at home, we are but eighteen miles asunder. Is it possible that such a paltry interval can separate us always? I will never believe it. Our house is going to be filled by a cousin of mine and her train, who will, I hope, spend the winter with us. I cannot, therefore, repeat my invitation at present, but expect me to be very troublesome on that theme next summer. I could almost scold you for not making Weston in your way home from Bedford. Though I am neither a relation, nor quite eighty-six years of age,* believe me, I should as much rejoice to see you and Mr. King, as if I were both. I send you, my dear madam, the poem I promised you, and shall be glad to send you anything and everything I write, as fast as it flows. Behold my two volumes! which, though your old acquaintance, I thought might receive an additional recommendation in the shape of a present from myself. What I have written I know not, for all has been scribbled in haste. I will not tempt your servant's honesty, who seems by his countenance to have a great deal, being equally watchful to preserve uncorrupted the honesty of my own. I am, my dearest madam, with a thousand thanks for this stroke of friendship, which I feel at my heart, and with Mrs. Unwin's very best respects, most sincerely yours, W. C. superior talents, it seems, give no security for propriety of conduct; on the contrary, having a natural tendency to nourish pride, they often betray the possessor into such mistakes as men more moderately gifted never commit. Ability, therefore, is not wisdom, and an ounce of grace is a better guard against gross absurdity than the brightest talents in the world. I rejoice that you are prepared for transcript work: here will be plenty for you. The day on which you shall receive this, I beg you will remember to drink one glass at least to the success of the Iliad, which I finished the day before yesterday, and yesterday began the Odyssey. It will be some time before I shall perceive myself travelling in another road; the objects around me are at present so much the same; Olympus, and a council of gods, meet me at my first entrance. To tell you the truth, I am weary of heroes and deities, and, with reverence be it spoken, shall be glad for variety's sake, to exchange their company for that of a Cyclops. Weston has not been without its tragedies since you left us; Mrs. Throckmorton's piping bullfinch has been eaten by a rat, and the villain left nothing but poor Bully's beak behind him. It will be a wonder if this event does not at some convenient time employ my versifying passion. Did ever fair lady, from the Lesbia of Catullus to the present day, lose her bird, and find no poet to commemorate the loss? W. C. discontinued this practice, and many others which I found it necessary to adopt that I might escape the worst of all evils, both in itself and in its consequences-an idle life. Many arts I have exercised with this view, for which nature never designed me; though among them were some in which I arrived at considerable proficiency, by mere dint of the most heroic perseverance. There is not a 'squire in all this country who can boast of having made better squirrel-houses, hutches for rabbits, or bird-cages, than myself; and in the article of cabbage-nets I had no superior. I even had the hardiness to take in hand the pencil, and studied a whole year the art of drawing. Many figures were the fruit of my labors, which had, at least, the merit of being unparalleled by any production either of art or nature. But, before the year was ended, I had occasion to wonder at the progress that may be made, in despite of natural deficiency, by dint alone of practice; for I actually produced three landscapes, which a lady thought worthy to be framed and glazed. I then judged it high time to exchange this occupation for another, lest, by any subsequent productions of inferior merit, I should forfeit the honor I had so fortunately acquired. But gardening was, of all employments, that in which I succeeded best; though even in this I did not suddenly attain perfection. I began with lettuces and cauliflowers: from thein I proceded to cucumbers; next to melons. I then purchased an orange tree, to which, in due time, I added two or three myrtles. These served me day and night with employment during a whole severe winter. To defend them from the frost, in a situation that exposed them to its severity, cost me much ingenuity and much attendance. I contrived to give them a fire heat; and have waded night after night through the snow, with Weston Lodge, Oct. 11, 1788. the bellows under my arm, just before go My dear Madam,-You are perfectly secure ing to bed, to give the latest possible puff from all danger of being overwhelmed with to the embers, lest the frost should seize presents from me. It is not much that a them before the morning. Very minute bepoet can possibly have it in his power to ginnings have sometimes important consegive. When he has presented his own quences. From nursing two or three little works, he may be supposed to have exhaust-evergreens, I became ambitious of a greened all means of donation. They are his only superfluity. There was a time, but that time was before I commenced writer for the press, when I amused myself in a way somewhat similar to yours; allowing, I mean, for the difference between masculine and female operations. The scissors and the needle are your chief implements; mine were the chisel and the saw. In those days you might have been in some danger of too plentiful a return for your favors. Tables, such as they were, and joint-stools, such as never were, might have travelled to Perten-hall in most inconvenient abundance. But I have long since Cowper here gives an amusing account of the manner in which he employed his nours of recreation, at different periods of his life. TO MRS. KING.* * Private correspondence. house, and accordingly built one; which, verse excepted, afforded me amusement for a longer time than any expedient of all the many to which I have fled for refuge from the misery of having nothing to do. When I left Olney for Weston, I could no longer have a greenhouse of my own; but in a neighbor's garden I find a better, of which the sole management is confined to me. I had need take care, when I begin a letter, that the subject with which I set off be of some importance; for before I can exhaust it, be it what it may, I have generally filled my paper. But self is a subject inexhaustible, which is the reason that though I have said little, and nothing, I am afraid, worth your hearing, I have only room to add that I am, my dear madam, Most truly yours, TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.* W. C. The Lodge, Nov. 29, 1788. My dear Friend,-Not to fill my paper with apologies, I will only say that you know my occupation, and how little time it leaves me for other employments; in which, had I leisure for them, I could take much pleasure. Letter-writing could be one of the most agreeable, and especially writing to you. a peep at my old friend Vincent Bourne; the neatest of all men in his versification, though, when I was under his ushership at Westminster, the most slovenly in his person. He was so inattentive to his boys, and so indifferent whether they brought him good or bad exercises, or none at all, that he seemed determined, as he was the best, so to be the last Latin poet of the Westminster line; a plot which, I believe, he executed very successfully, for I have not heard of any who has deserved to be compared with him. We have had hardly any rain or snow since you left us; the roads are accordingly as dry as in the middle of summer, and the opportuto-nity of walking much more favorable. We have no season, in my mind, so pleasant as such a winter; and I account it particularly fortunate, that such it proves, my cousin being with us. She is in good health, and cheerful, so are we all; and this I say, knowing you will be glad to hear it, for you have Poor Jenny Raban is declining fast wards the grave, and as fast aspiring to the skies. I expected to have heard yesterday of her death; but learned, on inquiry, that she was better. Dr. Kerr has seen her, and, by virtue I suppose of his prescriptions, her fits, with which she was frequently troubled, are become less frequent. But there is no reason, I believe, to look for her recovery: Her case is a consumption, into which I saw her sliding swiftly in the spring. There is not much to be lamented, or that ought to be so, in the death of those that go to glory If you find many blots, and my writing illegible, you must pardon them, in consider ation of the cause. Lady Hesketh and Mrs. Unwin are both talking as if they designed to make themselves amends for the silence they are enjoined while I sit translating Homer. Mrs. Unwin is preparing the breakfast, and, not having seen each other since they parted to go to bed, they have consequently a deal to communicate. I have seen Mr. Greatheed, both in his own house and here.† Prosperity sits well on him, and I cannot find that this advantageous change in his condition has made any alteration either in his views or his behavior. The winter is gliding merrily away, while my cousin is with us. She annihilates the difference between cold and heat, gloomy skies and cloudless. I have written I know not what, and with the despatch of legerdemain; but with the utmost truth and consciousness of what I say, assure you, my dear friend, that I am W. C. Ever yours, TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ. Weston, Nov. 30, 1788. My dear Friend,-Your letter accompanying the books with which you have favored me, and for which I return you a thousand thanks, did not arrive till yesterday. I shall have great pleasure in taking now and then • Private correspondence. Mr. Greatheed was now residing at Newport-Pagnel, and exercising his ministry there. seen the time when this could not be said of joice to see you here at Christmas; but I all your friends at Weston. We shall rerecollect, when I hinted such an excursion by word of mouth, you gave me no great enand yours may be of the number of those couragement to expect you. Minds alter, that do so; and, if it should, you will be etirely welcome to us all. Were there no other reason for your coming than merely the pleasure it will afford to us, that reason alone and with so many more in prospect, it seems would be sufficient: but, after so many toils, essential to your well-being that you should allow yourself a respite, which perhaps you can take as comfortably (I am sure as quietly) here as anywhere. The ladies beg to be remembered to you with all possible esteem and regard; they are just come down to breakfast, and, being at this moment extremely talkative, oblige me to put an end to my letter. Adieu. TO MRS. KING.* W. C. The Lodge, Dec. 6, 1788. My dear Madam,-It must, if you please, be a point agreed between us, that we will not make punctuality in writing the test of our regard for each other, lest we should incur the danger of pronouncing and suffering by an unjust sentence, and this mutually. I have told you, I believe, that the half hour before breakfast is my only letter-writing opportunity. In summer I rise rather early, and consequently at that season can find more time for scribbling than at present. If enter my study now before nine, I find all at sixes and sevens; for servants will take, in part at least, the liberty claimed by their * Private correspondence. masters. That you may not suppose us all sluggards alike, it is necessary, however, that I should add a word or two on this subject, in justification of Mrs. Unwin, who, because the days are too short for the important concerns of knitting stockings and mending them, rises generally by candle-light; a practice so much in the style of all the ladies of antiquity who were good for anything, that it is impossible not to applaud it. Mrs. Battison being dead, I began to fear that you would have no more calls to Bedford; but the marriage so near at hand, of the young lady you mention with a gentleman of that place, gives me hope again that you may occasionally approach us as heretofore, and that on some of those occasions you will perhaps find your way to Weston. The deaths of some and the marriages of others make a new world of it every thirty years. Within that space of time, the majority are displaced, and a new generation has succeeded. Here and there one is permitted to stay a little longer, that there may not be wanting a few grave Dons like myself, to make the observation. This thought struck me very forcibly, the other day, on reading a paper called the County Chronicle, which came hither in the package of some books from London. It contained news from Hertfordshire, and informed me, among other things, that at Great Berkhamstead, the place of my birth, there is hardly a family left of all those with whom, in my early days, I was so familiar. The houses, no doubt, remain, but the inhabitants are only to be found now by their grave-stones; and it is certain that I might pass through a town, in which I was once a sort of principal figure, unknowing and unknown. They are happy who have not taken up their rest in a world fluctuating as the sea, and passing away with the rapidity of a river. I wish to my heart that yourself and Mr. King may long continue, as you have already long continued, exceptions from the general truth of this remark. You doubtless married early, and the thirty-six years elapsed may have yet other years to succeed them. I do not forget that your relation Mrs. Battison lived to the age of eighty-six. I am glad of her longevity, because it seems to afford some assurance of yours; and I hope to know you better yet before die. you I have never seen the Observer, but am pleased with being handsomely spoken of by an old school-fellow. Cumberland* and I boarded together in the same house at Westminster. He was at that time clever, and I suppose has given proof sufficient to the world that he is still clever but of all that he has written, it has never fallen in my way *Author of the "Observer," "the West Indian," and of several dramatic pieces. TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.* The Lodge, Dec. 9, 1788. My dear Friend,-That I may return you the Latin manuscript as soon as possible, I take a short opportunity to scratch a few hasty lines, that it may not arrive alone. I have made here and there an alteration. which appeared to me for the better; but on the whole, I cannot but wonder at your adroitness in a business to which you have been probably at no time much accustomed, and which, for many years, you have not at all practised. If, when you shall have written the whole, you shall wish for a corrector of the rest, so far as my own skill in the matter goes, it is entirely at your service. Lady Hesketh is obliged to you for the part of your letter in which she is mentioned, and returns her compliments. She loves all my friends, and consequently cannot be indifferent to you. The Throckmortons are gone into Norfolk, on a visit to Lord Petre. They will probably return this day fortnight Mr. F is now preacher at Ravenstone. Mr. C still preaches here. The latter is warmly attended. The former has heard him, having, I suppose, a curiosity to know by what charm he held his popularity; but whether he has heard him to his own edification, or not, is more than I can say. Probably he wonders, for I have heard that he is a sensible man. His successful competitor Private correspondence. We have already alluded to Mr. Van Lier, a Dutch minister of the Reformed Church, to whom the perusal of Mr. Newton's writings was made instrumental in leafing his mind to clear and saving impressions of divine truth. He communicated to Mr. Newton an interesting account of this spiritual change of mind, in the Latin manuscript here mentioned, which was transmitted to Cowper, and afterward translated by him, and published by Mr. Newton. It is entitled "The Power of Grao Illustrated," and will be more particularly adverted to in a subsequent part of this book. |