lightful. I know that you will rejoice with me in the change that we have made, and for which I am alto gether indebted to Lady Hesketh. It is a change as great, as, (to compare metropolitan things with rural) from St. Giles to Grovesnor-square. Our house is in all respects commodious, and in some degree elegant; and I cannot give you a better idea of that which we have left, than by telling you the present candidates for it are a publican and a shoemaker. LETTER XIX. W. C. To Lady HESKETH. Weston, Dec. 21, 1786. Your welcome Letter, my beloved Cousin, which ought by the date to have ar rived on Sunday, being by some untoward accident delayed, came not till yesterday. It came however, and has relieved me from a thousand distressing apprehensions on your account, The dew of your intelligence has refreshed my poetical laurels. A little praise now and then is very good for your hard working poet, who is apt to grow languid, and perhaps careless without it. Praise I find affects us as money does. The more a man gets of it, with the more vigilance he watches over and preserves it. Such at least is its effect on me, and you may assure yourself that I will never lose a mite of it for want of care. I have already invited the good Padre in general terms, and he shall positively dine here next week, whether he will or not. I do not at all suspect that his kindness to Protestants has any thing insidious in it, any more than I suspect that he transcribes Homer for me with a view for my conversion. He would find me a tough piece of business I can tell him, for when I had no religion at all, I had yet a terrible dread of the Pope. How much more now! I should have sent you a longer Letter, but was obliged to devote my last evening to the melancholy employment of composing a Latin inscription for the tomb-stone of poor William, two copies of which I wrote out and inclosed, one to Henry Thornton, and one to Mr. Newton. Homer stands by me biting his thumbs, and swears, that if I do not leave off directly, he will choak me with bristly Greek, that shall stick in You wish to hear from me at any calm interval of epic frenzy. An interval presents itself, but, whether calm or not, is perhaps doubtful. Is it possible for a man to be calm, who for three weeks past has been perpetually occupied in slaughter: letting out one man's bowels, smiting another through the gullet, transfixing the liver of another, and lodging an arrow in the buttock of a fourth? Read the thirteenth book of the Iliad, and you will find such amusing incidents as these the subject of it, the sole subject. In order to interest myself in it, and to catch the spirit of it, I had need discard all humanity. It is woeful work; and were the best poet in the world to give us at this day such a list of killed and wounded, he would not escape universal censure, to the praise of a more enlightened age be it spoken. I have waded through much blood, and through much more I must wade, before I shall have finished. I determine in the mean time to account it all very sublime, and for two reasons. First, because all the learned think so, and secondly, because I am to translate it. But were I an indifferent by-stander perhaps I should venture to wish that Homer had applied his wonderful powers to a less disgusting subject. He has in the Odyssey, and I long to get at it. I have not the good fortune to meet with any of these fine things that you say are printed in my praise. But I learn from certain advertisements in the Morning Herald, that I make a conspicuous figure in the entertainments of Free-Mason's-Hall. I learn also that my volumes are out of print, and that a third edition is soon to be published. But if I am not gratified with the sight of odes composed to my honour and glory, I have at least been tickled with some douceurs of a very flattering nature by the post. A lady unknown addresses the best of men —an unknown gentleman has read my inimitable poems, and invites me to his seat in Hampshire— another incognito gives me hopes of a memorial in his garden, and a Welsh attorney sends me his verses to revise, and obligingly asks Say, shall my little bark attendant sail, "Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale?" If you find me a little vain hereafter, my friend, you must excuse it in consideration of these powerful incentives, especially the latter; for surely the poet who can charm an attorney, especially a Welsh one, must be at least an Orpheus, if not something greater. Mrs. Unwin is as much delighted as myself with our present situation. But it is a sort of April-weather life that we lead in this world. A little sunshine is generally the prelude to a storm. Hardly had we begun to enjoy the change, when the death of her son cast a gloom upon every thing. He was a most exemplary man; of your order; learned, polite, and amiable. The father of lovely children, and the husband of a wife, (very much like dear Mrs. Bagot) who adored him. Adieu, my friend! Your affectionate, W. C. |