TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ. May 8, 1770. these thoughts he one day broke out in the following prayer, when only myself was. with him, 'O Lord, thou art light; and in thee is no darkness at all. Thou art the fountain of all wisdom, and DEAR JOE, it is essential to thee to be good and gracious. I Your letter did not reach me till the last post, am a child, O Lord, teach me how I shall con- when I had not time to answer it. I left Camduct myself! Give me the wisdom of the serpent bridge immediately after my brother's death. with the harmlessness of the dove! Bless the souls I am obliged to you for the particular account thou hast committed to the care of thy helpless you have sent me * * miserable creature, who has no wisdom or know- He to whom I have surrendered myself and all ledge of his own, and make me faithful to them for my concerns hath otherwise appointed, and let his thy mercy's sake! Another time he said, 'How will be done. He gives me much which he withwonderful it is, that God should look upon man; holds from others; and if he was pleased to withand how much more wonderful, that he should look hold all that makes an outward difference between upon such a worm as I am! Yet he does look me and the poor mendicant in the street, it would upon me, and takes the exactest notice of all my still become me to say, his will be done. sufferings. He is present and I see him (I mean It pleased God to cut short my brother's conby faith); and he stretches out his arms towards nexions and expectations here, yet not without me' and he then stretched out his own-and giving him lively and glorious views of a better he says 'Come unto me, all ye that are weary happiness than any he could propose to himself in and heavy laden, and I will give you rest!' He such a world as this. Notwithstanding his great smiled and wept, when he spoke these words. learning, (for he was one of the chief men in the When he expressed himself upon these sub- university in that respect) he was candid and sinjects, there was a weight and a dignity in his cere in his inquiries after truth. Though he could manner such as I never saw before. He spoke not come into my sentiments when I first acwith the greatest deliberation, making a pause at quainted him with them, nor in the many converthe end of every sentence; and there was some-sations which I afterwards had with him upon thing in his air and in the tone of his voice, inex- the subject, could he be brought to acquiesce in pressibly solemn, unlike himself, unlike what I them as scriptural and true, yet I had no sooner had ever seen in another. left St. Alban's than he began to study with the This hath God wrought. I have praised him deepest attention those points in which we differed, for his marvellous act, and have felt a joy of heart and to furnish himself with the best writers upon upon the subject of my brother's death, such as I them. His mind was kept open to conviction for never felt but in my own conversion. He is now five years, during all which time he laboured in before the throne; and yet a little while and we this pursuit with unwearied diligence, as leisure shall meet, never more to be divided. and opportunity were afforded. Amongst his dy Yours, my very dear friend, with my affection- ing words were these, 'Brother, I thought you ate respects to yourself and yours. WILLIAM COWPER. wrong, yet wanted to believe as you did. I found myself not able to believe, yet always thought I should be one day brought to do so.' From the Postscript. A day or two before his death he study of books, he was brought upon his deathgrew so weak and was so very ill, that he required bed to the study of himself, and there learnt to continual attendance, so that he had neither renounce his righteousness, and his own most strength nor opportunity to say much to me. On- amiable character, and to submit himself to the ly the day before he said he had a sleepless, but a righteousness which is of God by faith. With composed and quiet night. I asked him, if he these views he was desirous of death. Satisfied of had been able to collect his thoughts. He re- his interest in the blessing purchased by the blood plied, 'All night long I have endeavoured to of Christ, he prayed for death with earnestness, think upon God and to continue in prayer. I had felt the approaches of it with joy, and died in great peace and comfort; and what comfort I had peace. Yours, my dear friend, W. C. came in that way.' When I saw him the next morning at seven o'clock he was dying, fast asleep, and exempted, in all appearance, from the sense of those pangs which accompany dissolution. I TO MRS. COWPER. shall be glad to hear from you, my dear friend, MY DEAR COUSIN, Olney, June 7, 1770. I AM am obliged to you for sometimes thinking of an unseen friend, and bestowing a letter upon me. It gives me pleasure to hear from you, especially to find that our gracious Lord enables 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 You judge rightly of the manner in which I darkness. 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 TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ. W. C. Sept. 25, 1770. neither strength nor opportunity to declare it. I DEAR JOE, doubt not that he enlightens the understandings, I HAVE not done conversing with terrestrial oband works a gracious change in the hearts of many jects, though I should be happy were I able to in their last moments, whose surrounding friends hold more continual converse with a friend aboveare not made acquainted with it. the skies. He has my heart, but he allows a cor 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 or-ner in it for all who show me kindness, and theredained he began to be dissatisfied with his reli- fore one for you. The storm of sixty-three made gious opinions, and to suspect that there were a wreck of the friendships I had contracted in the greater things concealed in the Bible, than were course of many years, yours excepted, which has generally believed or allowed to be there. From survived the tempest. 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, Seek 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 plea of the wisdom and majesty of God, than to sup- sure to surprise me with a benefit; and if he pose that he would entrust his secret counsels to a vagrant, who did not mean, I suppose, to be understood to have received her intelligence from the Fountain of Light, but thought herself sufficiently was afflicted. • The subsequent chasm in the Letters of this Voluine was occasioned by a long and severe illness with which the writer W. C. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. May 26, 1779. place. ineans me such a favour, I should disappoint him who want money as much as any mandarin ı by asking it. China? Rousseau would have been charmed to I repeat my thanks for your suggestion; you have seen me so occupied, and would have exsee a part of my reasons for thus conducting my-claimed with rapture, "that he had found the self; if we were together I could give you more.* Emilius who (he supposed) had subsisted only in Yours affectionately, his own idea." I would recommend it to you to follow my example. You will presently qualify yourself for the task, and may not only amuse yourself at home, but may even exercise your skill in mending the church windows; which, as it would save money to the parish, would conduce, I AM obliged to you for the Poets; and though I together with your other ministerial accomplishlittle thought I was translating so much money ments, to make you extremely popular in the 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 have lost no credit by the omission of such trash. Some of them again seem to me to have but a very disputable right to a place among the Classics; and I am quite at a loss when I see them in such company, to conjecture what is Dr. Johnson's idea or definition of classical merit. But if he inserts the poems of some who can hardly be said to deserve such an honour, the purchaser may comfort himself with the hope that he will exclude none that do. W. C. Your mother and I last week made a trip in a post chaise to Gayhurst, the seat of Mr. Wright, about four miles off. He understood that I did not much affect strange faces, and sent over his servant on purpose to inform me that he was going into Leicestershire, and that, if I chose to see the gardens, I might gratify myself without danger of seeing the proprietor. I accepted the invitation, and was delighted with all I found there.. The situation is happy, the gardens elegantly disposed. the hot-house in the most flourishing state, and the orange-trees the most captivating creatures of the kind I ever saw. A man, in short, had need have the talents of Cox or Langford, the auetioneers, to do the whole scene justice. Our love attends you all. Yours, 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- TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. inent I can reduce the glass to its proper dimen MY DEAR FRIEND, sions. If I were a plumber I should be a comOct. 31, 1779. plete glazier; and possibly the happy time may I had nothing to say, in answer to which you have I WROTE my last letter merely to inform you that come, when I shall be seen trudging away to the said nothing. I admire the propriety of your conneighbouring towns with a shelf of glass hanging duct, though I am a loser by it. I will endeavour at my back. If government should impose anotax upon that commodity, I hardly know a busito say something now, and shall hope for someness in which a gentleman might more successthing in return. fully employ himself. A Chinese, of ten times my fortune, would avail himself of such an opportunity without scruple; and why should not I, The allusion in this letter is to Lord Thurlow, who was mumoted to the Lord High Chancellorship of England in the Burly part of the month in which it was written. I have been well entertained with Johnson's ception, and that a swinging one, I think he has biography, for which I thank you; with one exacquitted himself with his usual good sense and sufficiency. His treatment of Milton is unmerciful to the last degree. He has belaboured that great poet's character with the most industrious 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 Your mother says-"Pray send my dear love." how apt it is in the mouth of some readers, to de- There is hardly room to add mine, but you will generate into declamation. suppose it. Yours, W. C. 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. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. As you are pleased to desire my letters, I am the more pleased with writing them, though, at MY DEAR FRIEND, Dec. 2, 1779. the same time, I must needs testify my surprise How quick is the succession of human events! that you should think them worth receiving, as I The cares of to-day are seldom the cares of to- seldom send one that I think favourably of myself. morrow; and when we lie down at night, we may This is not to be understood as an imputation 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 seem 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 aro 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 remarkaWhen I wrote last, I was little inclined to send ble for solidity of judgment. They have generyou a copy of verses entitled the Modern Patriot, ally strong passions to bias it, and are led far but was not quite pleased with a line or two which away from their proper road, in pursuit of pretty I found it difficult to mend, therefore did not. At phantoms of their own creating. No law ever night I read Mr. Burke's speech in the newspaper, did or can effect what he has ascribed to that of and was so well pleased with his proposals for a Moses; it is reserved for mercy to subdue the correformation, and with the temper in which he rupt inclinations of mankind, which threatenings made them, that I began to think better of his and penalties, through the depravity of the heart, cause, and burnt my verses. Such is the lot of have always had a tendency rather to inflame. 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 find that he has laid his leaf-gold upon touch-wood, bring order out of confusion; the progress from 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 themject, 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 speak truth, and all truth is sterling; I only premise, that in a philosophical tract in the Register, I found it asserted that the glow-worm is the -nightingale's food.* Affectionately yours, W. C. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. MY DEAR FRIEND, I have heard nothing more from Mr. Newton, upon the subject you mention; but I dare say that having been given to expect the benefit of your nomination in behalf of his nephew, he still depends upon it. His obligations to Mr. 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. · March 18, 1780. I AM obliged to you for the communication of your correspondence with It was impossible for any man, of any temper whatever, and 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 occupations upon that day; but, entering more deeply into the meaning of the precept, allotted those 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 |