you to weather out the storms you meet with, and honoured by any who would give her credit for a to cast anchor within the veil. secret intercourse of this kind with the prince of darkness. W. C. You judge rightly of the manner in which I have been affected by the Lord's late dispensation Mrs. Unwin is much obliged to you for your towards my brother. I found in it cause of sor-kind inquiry after her. She is well, I thank God, row, that I had lost so near a relation, and one so as usual, and sends her respects to you. Her son deservedly dear to me, and that he left me just is in the ministry, and has the living of Stock, in when our sentiments upon the most interesting Essex. We were last week alarmed with an acsubject became the same; but much more cause count of his being dangerously ill; Mrs. Unwin of joy, that it pleased God to give me clear and went to see him, and in a few days left him out evident proof that he had changed his heart, and of danger. adopted him into the number of his children. For this I hold myself peculiarly bound to thank him, because he might have done all that he was pleased to do for him, and yet have afforded him neither strength nor opportunity to declare it. I DEAR JOE, doubt not that he enlightens the understandings, and works a gracious change in the hearts of many in their last moments, whose surrounding friends are not made acquainted with it. TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ. Sept. 25, 1770. I HAVE not done conversing with terrestrial objects, though I should be happy were I able to hold more continual converse with a friend above the skies. He has my heart, but he allows a corner in it for all who show me kindness, and therefore one for you. The storm of sixty-three made a wreck of the friendships I had contracted in the course of many years, yours excepted, which has survived the tempest. W. C.* TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. I FEEL myself much obliged to you for your He told me that from the time he was first ordained he began to be dissatisfied with his religious opinions, and to suspect that there were greater things concealed in the Bible, than were generally believed or allowed to be there. From the time when I first visited him after my release I thank you for your repeated invitation. Sinfrom St. Alban's, he began to read upon the sub-gular thanks are due to you for so singular an ject. It was at that time I informed him of the instance of your regard. I could not leave Olney, views of divine truth which I had received in that unless in a case of absolute necessity, without school of affliction. He laid what I said to heart, much inconvenience to myself and others. and began to furnish himself with the best writers upon the controverted points, whose works he read with great diligence and attention, comparing them all the while with the Scripture. None ever truly and ingenuously sought the truth but they found it. A spirit of earnest inquiry is the gift | DEAR UNWIN, of God, who never says to any, Seck ye my face in vain. Accordingly, about ten days before his kind intimation, and have given the subject of it death, it pleased the Lord to dispel all his doubts, all my best attention, both before I received your and to reveal in his heart the knowledge of the letter and since. The result is, that I am perSaviour, and to give him firm and unshaken peace suaded it will be better not to write. I know the in the belief of his ability and willingness to save. man and his disposition well; he is very liberal in As to the affair of the fortune-teller, he never men- his way of thinking, generous and discerning. tioned it to me, nor was there any such paper He is well aware of the tricks that are played upon found as you mention. I looked over all his pa- such occasions, and after fifteen years interruppers before I left the place, and had there been tion of all intercourse between us, would translate such a one, must have discovered it. I have heard my letter into this language-pray remember the the report from other quarters, but no other parti- poor. This would disgust him, because he would culars than that the woman foretold him when he think our former intimacy disgraced by such an should die. I suppose there may be some truth in oblique application. He has not forgotten me, the matter, but whatever he might think of it be- and if he had, there are those about him who can fore his knowledge of the truth, and however ex- not come into his presence without reminding him traordinary her predictions might really be, I am of me, and he is also perfectly acquainted with my satisfied that he had then received far other views circumstances. It would perhaps give him pleasure to surprise me with a benefit; and if he of the wisdom and majesty of God, than to suppose that he would entrust his secret counsels to a vagrant, who did not mean, I suppose, to be un* The subsequent chasm in the Letters of this Volume was derstood to have received her intelligence from the occasioned by a long and severe illness with which the writer Fountain of Light, but thought herself sufficiently was afflicted. ineans me such a favour, I should disappoint him who want money as much as any mandarin în I repeat my thanks for your suggestion; you have seen me so occupied, and would have ex- TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. May 26, 1779. I AM obliged to you for the Poets; and though I little thought I was translating so much money out of your pocket into the bookseller's, when I turned Prior's poem into Latin, yet I must needs I have eight pair of tame pigeons. When I say that, if you think it worth while to purchase first enter the garden in a morning, I find them the English Classics at all, you can not possess perched upon the wall, waiting for their breakfast; yourself of them upon better terms. I have looked for I feed them always upon the gravel-walk. If into some of the volumes, but not having yet finish-your wish should be accomplished, and you should ed the Register, have merely looked into them. A find yourself furnished with the wings of a dove, few things I have met with, which if they had I shall undoubtedly find you amongst them. Only been burned the moment they were written, it be so good, if that should be the case, to announce would have been better for the author, and at yourself by some means or other. For I imagine least as well for his readers. There is not much your crop will require something better than tares of this, but a little too much. I think it a pity to fill it. the editor admitted any; the English muse would Your mother and I last week made a trip in a have lost no credit by the omission of such trash. post chaise to Gayhurst, the seat of Mr. Wright, Some of them again seem to me to have but a very about four miles off. He understood that I did not disputable right to a place among the Classics; much affect strange faces, and sent over his serand I am quite at a loss when I see them in such vant on purpose to inform me that he was going company, to conjecture what is Dr. Johnson's idea into Leicestershire, and that, if I chose to see the or definition of classical merit. But if he inserts gardens, I might gratify myself without danger of the poems of some who can hardly be said to de-seeing the proprietor. I accepted the invitation, serve such an honour, the purchaser may comfort and was delighted with all I found there. The himself with the hope that he will exclude none that do. W. C. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. AMICO MIO, Sept. 21, 1779. BE pleased to buy me a glazier's diamond pencil. I have glazed the two frames designed to receive my pine plants. But I can not mend the kitchen windows, till by the help of that imple-| ment I can reduce the glass to its proper dimensions. If I were a plumber I should be a complete glazier; and possibly the happy time may I come, when I shall be seen trudging away to the neighbouring towns with a shelf of glass hanging at my back. If government should impose anotax upon that commodity, I hardly know a business in which a gentleman might more successfully employ himself. A Chinese, of ten times my fortune, would avail himself of such an opportunity without scruple; and why should not I, situation is happy, the gardens elegantly disposed. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. Oct. 31, 1779. I WROTE my last letter merely to inform you that had nothing to say, in answer to which you have said nothing. I admire the propriety of your conduct, though I am a loser by it. I will endeavour to say something now, and shall hope for something in return. I have been well entertained with Johnson's biography, for which I thank you; with one exception, and that a swinging one, I think he has acquitted himself with his usual good sense and sufficiency. His treatment of Milton is unmercifromoted to the Lord High Chancellorship of England in the ful to the last degree. He has belaboured that early part of the month in which it was written. The allusion in this letter is to Lord Thurlow, who was great poet's character with the most industrious 1 cruelty. As a man, he has hardly left him the now you have nothing to do but to chink your shadow of one good quality. Churlishness in his purse, and laugh at what is past. Your delicacy private life, and a rancorous hatred of every thing makes you groan under that which other men royal in his public, are the two colours with which never feel, or feel but lightly. A fly that settles he has smeared all the canvas. If he had any vir-upon the tip of the nose, is troublesome; and this tues, they are not to be found in the doctor's pic- is a comparison adequate to the most that manture of him, and it is well for Milton that some kind in general are sensible of, upon such tiny ocsourness in his temper is the only vice with which casions. But the flies that pester you, always get his memory has been charged; it is evident enough between your eye-lids, where the annoyance is althat if his biographer could have discovered more, most insupportable. he would not have spared him. As a poet, he has I would follow your advice, and endeavour to furtreated him with severity enough, and has plucked nish Lord North with a scheme of supplies for the one or two of the most beautiful feathers out of ensuing year, if the difficulty I find in answering his Muse's wing, and trampled them under his the call of my own emergencies did not make me great foot. He has passed sentence of condemna- despair of satisfying those of the nation. I can say tion upon Lycidas, and has taken occasion, from but this; if I had ten acres of land in the world, that charming poem, to expose to ridicule (what is whereas I have not one, and in those ten acres indeed ridiculous enough) the childish prattlement should discover a gold mine, richer than all Mexico of pastoral compositions, as if Lycidas was the and Peru, when I had reserved a few ounces for prototype and pattern of them all. The liveliness my own annual supply, I would willingly give the of the description, the sweetness of the numbers, rest to government. My ambition would be more the classical spirit of antiquity that prevails in it, gratified by annihilating the national incumbrances go for nothing. I am convinced, by the way, that than by going daily down to the bottom of a mine he has no ear for poetical numbers, or that it was to wallow in my own emolument. This is patriotstopped by prejudice against the harmony of Mil- ism-you will allow; but alas, this virtue is for the ton's. Was there ever any thing so delightful as most part in the hands of those who can do no good the music of the Paradise Lost? It is like that with it! He that has but a single handful of it, of a fine organ; has the fullest and the deepest catches so greedily at the first opportunity of growtones of majesty, with all the softness and elegance ing rich, that his patriotism drops to the ground, of the Dorian flute. Variety without end, and and he grasps the gold instead of it. He that never equalled, unless perhaps by Virgil. Yet the never meets with such an opportunity, holds it fast doctor has little or nothing to say upon this co-in his clenched fist, and says,-"Oh, how much pious theme, but talks something about the unfit- good I would do if I could!" ness of the English language for blank verse, and how apt it is in the mouth of some readers, to degenerate into declamation. I could talk a good while longer, but I have no room; our love attends you. Yours affectionately, W. C. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. MY DEAR FRIEND, Your mother says "Pray send my dear love." TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. As you are pleased to desire my letters, I an the more pleased with writing them, though, at the same time, I must needs testify my surprise that you should think them worth receiving, as I seldom send one that I think favourably of myself. This is not to be understood as an imputation Dec. 2, 1779. How quick is the succession of human events! The cares of to-day are seldom the cares of tomorrow; and when we lie down at night, we may safely say to most of our troubles "Ye have done upon your taste or judgment, but as an encomium your worst, and we shall meet no more." upon my own modesty and humility, which I This observation was suggested to me by read- desire you to remark well. It is a just observation ing your last letter; which though I have written of Sir Joshua Reynolds, that though men of ordisince I received it, I have never answered. When nary talents may be highly satisfied with their that epistle passed under your pen, you were mi- own productions, men of true genius never are. serable about your tithes, and your imagination Whatever be their subject, they always seem to was hung round with pictures, that terrified you themselves to fall short of it, even when they secm to such a degree as made even the receipt of mo- to others most to excel. And for this reasonney burdensome. But it is all over now. You because they have a certain sublime sense of persent away your farmers in good humour (for you fection which other men are strangers to, and can make people merry whenever you please), and which they themselves in their performances are not able to exemplify. Your servant, Sir Joshua! | however wedded to his own purpose, to resent so I little thought of seeing you when I began, but gentle and friendly an exhortation as you sent him. as you have popped in you are welcome. Men of lively imaginations are not often remarkable for solidity of judgment. They have generally strong passions to bias it, and are led far away from their proper road, in pursuit of pretty phantoms of their own creating. No law ever did or can effect what he has ascribed to that of Moses; it is reserved for mercy to subdue the corrupt inclinations of mankind, which threatenings and penalties, through the depravity of the heart, have always had a tendency rather to inflame. When I wrote last, I was little inclined to send you a copy of verses entitled the Modern Patriot, but was not quite pleased with a line or two which I found it difficult to mend, therefore did not. At night I read Mr. Burke's speech in the newspaper, and was so well pleased with his proposals for a reformation, and with the temper in which he made them, that I began to think better of his cause, and burnt my verses. Such is the lot of the man who writes upon the subject of the day: The love of power seems as natural to kings, as the aspect of affairs changes in an hour or two, the desire of liberty is to their subjects; the excess and his opinion with it; what was just and well- of either is vicious, and tends to the ruin of both. deserved satire in the morning, in the evening There are many, I believe, who wish the present becomes a libel; the author commences his own corrupt state of things dissolved, in hope that the judge, and while he condemns with unrelenting pure primitive constitution will spring up from the severity what he so lately approved, is sorry to ruins. But it is not for man, by himself man, to the progress from find that he has laid his leaf-gold upon touch-wood, bring order out of confusion; which crumbled away under his fingers. Alas! one to the other is not natural, much less necessawhat can I do with my wit? I have not enough ry, and without the intervention of divine aid, to do great things with, and these little things are impossible; and they who are for making the so fugitive, that while a man catches at the sub-hazardous experiment, would certainly find them ject, he is only filling his hand with smoke. I must selves disappointed. do with it as I do with my linnet; I keep him for the most part in a cage, but now and then set open the door that he may whisk about the room a little, and then shut him up again. My whisking wit has produced the following, the subject of which is more important than the manner in which I have treated it seems to imply, but a fable may I have heard nothing more from Mr. Newton, speak truth, and all truth is sterling; I only pre- upon the subject you mention; but I dare say that mise, that in a philosophical tract in the Register, having been given to expect the benefit of your I found it asserted that the glow-worm is the nomination in behalf of his nephew, he still denightingale's food.* pends upon it. His obligations to Mr. Affectionately yours, W. C. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. have An officer of a regiment, part of which is quar-been so numerous, and so weighty, that though he tered here, gave one of the soldiers leave to be has, in a few instances, prevailed upon himself to drunk six weeks, in hopes of curing him by satie-recommend an object now and then to his patronty—he was drunk six weeks, and is so still, as age, he has very sparingly, if at all, exerted his often as he can find an opportunity. One vice interest with him in behalf of his own relations. may swallow up another, but no coroner in the state of Ethics ever brought in his verdict, when vice died, that it was-felo de se. a Thanks for all you have done, and all you intend; the biography will be particularly welcome. Yours, W. C. TO THE REV. J. NEWTON. I With respect to the advice you are required to give to a young lady, that she may be properly instructed in the manner of keeping the sabbath, just subjoin a few hints that have occurred to me upon the occasion; not because I think you want them, but because it would seem unkind to withhold them. The sabbath then, I think, may be considered, first, as a commandment, no less binding upon modern christians than upon ancient Jews, because the spiritual people amongst them did not think it enough to abstain from manual occuI AM obliged to you for the communication of pations upon that day; but, entering more deeply your correspondence with It was impossi-into the meaning of the precept, allotted those ble for any man, of any temper whatever, and hours they took from the world, to the cultivation of holiness in their own souls, which ever was, and ever will be a duty incumbent upon all who •This letter contained the beautiful fable of the Nightin- ever heard of a sabbath, and is of perpetual obligale and Glow-worm. gation both upon Jews and christians, (the com March 18, 1780. mandment, therefore, enjoins it; the prophets have because it is so. He means to do his duty, and by also enforced it; and in many instances, both doing it he earns his wages. The two rectories scriptural and modern, the breach of it has been being contiguous to each other, and following punished with providential and judicial severity easily under the care of one pastor, and both so that may make by-standers tremble): secondly, as near to Stock that you can visit them witha privilege, which you well know how to dilate out difficulty, as often as you please, I see no upon, better than I can tell you: thirdly, as a sign reasonable objection, nor does your mother. As of that covenant by which believers are entitled to to the wry-mouthed sneers and illiberal miscona rest that yet remaineth: fourthly, as the sine structions of the censorious, I know no better shield qua non of the christian character; and upon this to guard you against them, than what you are head I should guard against being misunderstood already furnished with a clear and unoffending to mean no more than two attendances upon pub-conscience. lic worship, which is a form complied with by I am obliged to you for what you said upon the thousands who never kept a sabbath in their lives. subject of book-buying, and am very fond of availConsistence is necessary, to give substance and ing myself of another man's pocket, when I can solidity to the whole. To sanctify the day at do it creditably to myself, and without injury to church, and to trifle it away out of church, is pro- him. Amusements are necessary, in a retirement fanation, and vitiates all. After all, I could ask like mine, especially in such a sable state of mind my catechumen one short question-'Do you love the as I labour under. The necessity of amusement day, or do you not? If you love it, you will never makes me sometimes write verses-it made me a inquire how far you may safely deprive yourself of the enjoyment of it. If you do not love it, and you find yourself obliged in conscience to acknowledge it, that is an alarming symptom, and ought to make you tremble. If you do not love it, then it is a weariness to you, and you wish it was over. The ideas of labour and rest are not more opposite to each other than the idea of a sabbath, and that dislike and disgust with which it fills the souls of thousands to be obliged to keep it. It is worse than bodily labour.' W. C. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. carpenter, a bird-cage maker, a gardener-and has lately taught me to draw, and to draw too with such surprising proficiency in the art, considering my total ignorance of it two months ago, that when I show your mother my productions, she is all admiration and applause. You need never fear the communication of what you entrust to us in confidence. You know your mother's delicacy in this point sufficiently; and as for me, I once wrote a Connoisseur upon the subject of secret keeping, and from that day to this I believe I have never divulged one. We were much pleased with Mr. Newton's application to you for a charity sermon, and with what he said upon that subject in his last letter, 'that he was glad of an opportunity to give you that proof of his regard.' Believe me yours, W. C TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. I NEVER was, any more than yourself, a friend to pluralities; they are generally found in the hands of the avaricious, whose insatiable hunger after preferment proves them unworthy of any at all. They attend much to the regular payment of their dues, but not at all to the spiritual interest of their parishioners. Having forgot their duty, or never known it, they differ in nothing from the laity, ex- SINCE I wrote my last we have had a visit cept their outward garb, and their exclusive right from—. I did not feel myself vehemently to the desk and pulpit. But when pluralities seek disposed to receive him with that complaisance, the man, instead of being sought by him; and from which a stranger generally infers that he is when the man is honest, conscientious, and pious; welcome. By his manner, which was rather bold careful to employ a substitute in those respects than easy, I judged that there was no occasion for like himself; and, not contented with this, will see it, and that it was a trifle which, if he did not meet with his own eyes that the concerns of his parishes with, neither would he feel the want of. He has are decently and diligently administered; in that the air of a traveled man, but not of a traveled case, considering the present dearth of such cha- gentleman; is quite delivered from that reserve racters in the ministry, I think it an event advan- which is so common an ingredient in the English Lageous to the people, and much to be desired by all character, yet does not open himself gently and who regret the great and apparent want of sobriety gradually, as men of polite behaviour do, but bursts and earnestness among the clergy. A man who upon you all at once. He talks very loud, and does not seek a living merely as a pecuniary emol- when our poor little robins hear a great noise, they ument has no need, in my judgment, to refuse one are immediately seized with an ambition to surpass |