TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. MY DEAR FRIEND, Jan. 5, 1782. could be very entertaining, I would be so, because, thing more than guts to satisfy; there are the yearnby giving me credit for such a willingness to please, ings of the heart, which, let philosophers say what you only allow me a share of that universal vani- they will, are more importunate than all the necesty, which inclines every man, upon all occasions, sities of the body, that will not suffer a creature, to exhibit himself to the best advantage. To say worthy to be called human, to be contented with the truth, however, when I write, as I do to you, an insulated life, or to look for his friends among not about business, nor on any subject that ap- the beasts of the forest. Yourself, for instance! proaches to that description, I mean much less my It is not because there are no tailors or pastry-cooks correspondent's amusement, which my modesty to be found upon Salisbury plain, that you do not will not always permit me to hope for, than my choose it for your abode, but because you are own. There is a pleasure annexed to the commu- a philanthropist-because you are susceptible nication of one's ideas, whether by word of mouth, of social impressions, and have a pleasure in doing or by letter, which nothing earthly can supply the a kindness when you can. Now upon the word place of, and it is the delight we find in this mu- of a poor creature, I have said all that I have said, tual intercourse, that not only proves us to be crea- without the least intention to say one word of it tures intended for social life, but more than any when I began. But thus it is with my thoughts thing else perhaps fits us for it. I have no patience when you shake a crab-tree the fruit falls; good with philosophers-they, one and all, suppose (at for nothing indeed when you have got it, but still least I understand it to be a prevailing opinion the best that is to be expected from a crab-tree. among them) that man's weakness, his necessities, You are welcome to them, such as they are, and his inability to stand alone, have furnished the pre- if you approve my sentiments, tell the philosophers vailing motive, under the influence of which he of the day, that I have outshot them all, and have renounced at first a life of solitude, and became a discovered the true origin of society, when I least gregarious creature. It seems to me more reasona-looked for it. ble, as well as more honourable to my species, to suppose, that generosity of soul, and a brotherly] attachment to our own kind, drew us, as it were, to one common centre, taught us to build cities, and inhabit them, and welcome every stranger, that would cast in his lot amongst us, that we DID I allow myself to plead the common excuse might enjoy fellowship with each other, and the of idle correspondents, and esteem it a sufficient luxury of reciprocal endearments, without which reason for not writing, that I have nothing to write a paradise could afford no comfort. There are in- about, I certainly should not write now. But I deed all sorts of characters in the world; there are have so often found, on similar occasions, when a some whose understandings are so sluggish, and great penury of matter has seemed to threaten me whose hearts are such mere clods, that they live in with an utter impossibility of hatching a letter, society without either contributing to the sweets that nothing is necessary but to put pen to paper, of it, or having any relish for them. A man of and go on, in order to conquer all difficulties; that, this stamp passes by our window continually-I availing myself of past experience, I now begin never saw him conversing with a neighbour but with a most assured persuasion, that sooner or later, once in my life, though I have known him by sight one idea naturally suggesting another, I shall come these twelve years; he is of a very sturdy make, to a most prosperous conclusion. and has a round belly, extremely protuberant, In the last Review, I mean in the last but one, which he evidently considers as his best friend, be-I saw Johnson's critique upon Prior and Pope. I cause it is his only companion, and it is the labour am bound to acquiesce in his opinion of the latter, of his life to fill it.. I can easily conceive, that it because it has always been my own. I could never is merely the love of good eating and drinking,gree with those who preferred him to Dryden; and now and then the want of a new pair of shoes, or with others (I have known such, and persons that attaches this man so much to the neighbour-of taste and discernment too) who could not allow hood of his fellow mortals; for suppose these exi- him to be a poet at all. He was certainly a megencies, and others of a like kind, to subsist no chanical maker of verses, and in every line he ever longer, and what is there that could possibly give wrote, we see indubitable marks of most indefatisociety the preference in his esteem? He might gable industry and labour. Writers who find it strut about with his two thumbs upon his hips in necessary to make such strenuous and painful exthe wilderness, he could hardly be more silent than ertions, are generally as phlegmatic as they are he is at Olney, and for any advantage, or comfort, correct; but Pope was, in this respect, exempted or friendship, or brotherly affection, he could not from the common lot of authors of that class. be more destitute of such blessings there, than in With the unwearied application of a plodding Flenis present situation. But other men have some-mish painter, who draws a shrimp with the most TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. MY DEAR WILLIAM, minute exactness, he had all the genius of one of agine, the last proof sheet of my volume, which the first masters. Never I believe were such ta- will consist of about three hundred and fifty pages lents and such drudgery united. But I admire honestly printed. My public entrée therefore is Dryden most, who has succeeded by mere dint of not far distant. Yours, W. C. genius, and in spite of a laziness and carelessness almost peculiar to himself. His faults are numberless, and so are his beauties. His faults are those of a great man, and his beauties are such (at least sometimes) as Pope, with all his touching, and retouching, could never equal. So far, there- I AM glad we agree in our opinion of king critic, fore, I have no quarrel with Johnson. But I can and the writers on whom he has bestowed his an not subscribe to what he says of Prior. In the imadversions. It is a matter of indifference to me first place, though my memory may fail me, I do whether I think with the world at large or not, not recollect that he takes any notice of his Solo- but I wish my friends to be of my mind. The mon; in my mind the best poem, whether we con- same work will wear a different appearance in the sider the subject of it, or the execution, that he eyes of the same man, according to the different ever wrote. In the next place, he condemns him views with which he reads it; if merely for his for introducing Venus and Cupid into his love- amusement, his candour being in less danger of a verses, and concludes it impossible his passion twist from interest or prejudice, he is pleased with could be sincere, because when he would express what is really pleasing, and is not over curious to it he has recourse to fables. But when Prior wrote, discover a blemish, because the exercise of a mithose deities were not so obsolete as they are at nute exactness is not consistent with his purpose. present. His contemporary writers, and some But if he once becomes a critic by trade, the case is that succeeded him, did not think them beneath altered. He must then at any rate establish, it their notice. Tibullus, in reality, disbelieved their he can, an opinion in every mind, of his uncomexistence as much as we do; yet Tibullus is al- mon discernment, and his exquisite taste. This lowed to be the prince of all poetical inamoratos, great end he can never accomplish by thinking in though he mentions them in almost every page. the track that has been beaten under the hoof of There is a fashion in these things, which the Doc public judgment. He must endeavour to contor seems to have forgotten. But what shall we vince the world, that their favourite authors have say of his fusty-rusty remarks upon Henry and more faults than they are aware of, and such as Emma? I agree with him, that morally consider they have never suspected. Having marked out ed, both the knight and his lady are bad charac-a writer, universally esteemed, whom he finds it ters, and that each exhibits an example which for that very reason convenient to depreciate ought not to be followed. The man dissembles in and traduce, he will overlook some of his beaua way that would have justified the woman had ties, he will faintly praise others, and in such a she renounced him; and the woman resolves to manner as to make thousands, more modest, though follow him at the expense of delicacy, propriety, quite as judicious as himself, question whether and even modesty itself. But when the critic calls they are beauties at all. Can there be a stronger it a dull dialogue, who but a critic will believe him? illustration of all that 1 have said, than the severity There are few readers of poetry of either sex, in of Johnson's remarks upon Prior, I might have this country, who can not remember how that en- said the injustice? His reputation as an author chanting piece has bewitched them, who do not who, with much labour indeed but with admiraknow, that instead of finding it tedious, they have ble success, has embellished all his poems with the been so delighted with the romantic turn of it, as most charming ease, stood unshaken till Johnson to have overlooked all its defects, and to have giv-thrust his head against it. And how does he aten it a consecrated place in their memories, with- tack him in this his principal fort? I can not reout ever feeling it a burthen. I wonder almost, collect his very words, but I am much mistaken, that as the Bacchanals served Orpheus, the boys indeed, if my memory fails me with respect to the and girls do not tear this husky, dry, commentator, purport of them. "His words," he says, “appear limb from limb, in resentment of such an injury done to be forced into their proper places; there indeed to their darling poet. I admire Johnson as a man of we find them, but find likewise that their arrangegreat erudition and sense; but when he sets him- ment has been the effect of constraint, and that self up for a judge of writers upon the subject of without violence they would certainly have stood love, a passion which I suppose he never felt in his in a different order." By your leave, most learned life, he might as well think himself qualified to Doctor, this is the most disingenuous remark I ever pronounce upon a treatise on horsemanship, or the met with, and would have come with a better grace art of fortification. from Curl, or Dennis. Every man conversant The next packet I receive will bring me, I im-with verse-writing knows, and knows by painful Yours, my dear friend, W. C experience, that the familiar style is of all styles son's Seasons might afford him some useful lesthe most difficult to succeed in. To make verse [sons. At least they would have a tendency to speak the language of prose, without being prosaic, give his mind an observing and a philosophical to marshall the words of it in such an order, as turn. I do not forget that he is but a child. But they might naturally take in falling from the lips I remember, that he is a child favoured with talof an extemporary speaker, yet without meanness; ents superior to his years. We were much pleasharmoniously, elegantly, and without seeming to led with his remarks on your almsgiving, and doubt displace a syllable for the sake of the rhyme, is one not but it will be verified with respect to the two guiof the most arduous tasks a poet can undertake. neas you sent us, which have made four Christian He that could accomplish this task was Prior; people happy. Ships I have none, nor have many have imitated his excellence in this particu- touched a pencil these three years; if ever I take lar, but the best copies have fallen far short of the it up again, which I rather suspect I shall not (the original. And now to tell us, after we and our employment requiring stronger eyes than mine), fathers have admired him for it so long, hat he is it shall be at John's service. an easy writer indeed, but that his ease has an air of stiffness in it, in short, that his ease is not ease, but only something like it, what is it but a selfcontradiction, an observation that grants what it is just going to deny, and denies what it has just granted, in the same sentence, and in the same MY DEAR FRIEND, Feb. 2, 1782. breath? But I have filled the greatest part of my THOUGH I value your correspondence highly sheet with a very uninteresting subject. I will on its own account, I certainly value it the more only say, that as a nation we are not much indebt-in consideration of the many difficulties under ed, in point of poetical credit, to this too sagacious which you carry it on. Having so many other and unmerciful judge;, and that for myself in par-engagements, and engagements so much more ticular, I have reason to rejoice that he entered worthy your attention, I ought to esteem it, as I upon and exhausted the labours of his office, be- do, a singular proof of your friendship, that you fore my poor volume could possibly become an ob- so often make an opportunity to bestow a letter ject of them. By the way, you can not have a book upon me; and this, not only because mine, which at the time you mention; I have lived a fortnight I write in a state of mind not very favourable to or more in expectation of the last sheet, which is not yet arrived. TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. religious contemplations, are never worth your reading, but especially because while you consult You have already furnished John's memory my gratification and endeavour to amuse my mewith by far the greatest part of what a parent could lancholy, your thoughts are forced out of the only wish to store it with. If all that is merely trivial, channel in which they delight to flow, and conand all that has an immoral tendency, were ex-strained into another so different and so little inpunged from our English poets, how would they teresting to a mind like yours, that but for me, shrink, and how would some of them completely and for my sake, they would perhaps never visit vanish. I believe there are some of Dryden's Fa- it. Though I should be glad therefore to hear bles, which he would find very entertaining; they from you every week, I do not complain that I are for the most part fine compositions, and not enjoy that privilege but once in a fortnight, but above his apprehension; but Dryden has written am rather happy to be indulged in it so often. few things, that are not blotted here and there I thank you for the jog you gave Johnson's with an unchaste allusion, so that you must pick elbow; communicated from him to the printer it his way for him, lest he should tread in the dirt. has produced me two more sheets, and two more You did not mention Milton's Allegro and Pense- will bring the business, I suppose, to a conclusion. roso, which I remember being so charmed with I sometimes feel such a perfect indifference with when I was a boy that I was never weary of them. respect to the public opinion of my book, that I There are even passages in the paradisiacal part am ready to flatter myself no censure of reviewof the Paradise Lost, which he might study with ers, or other critical readers, would occasion me advantage. And to teach him, as you can, to de- the smallest disturbance. But not feeling myself liver some of the fine orations made in the Pan- constantly possessed of this desirable apathy, I am dæmonium, and those between Satan, Ithuriel, sometimes apt to suspect, that it is not altogether `and Zephon, with emphasis, dignity, and proprie- sincere, or at least that I may lose just in the moty, might be of great use to him hereafter. The ment when I may happen most to want it. Be sooner the ear is formed, and the organs of speech it however as it may, I am still persuaded that it are accustomed to the various inflections of the is not in their power to mortify me much. I have voice, which the rehearsal of those passages de- intended well, and performed to the best of my mands the better. I should think too, that Thom- ability-so far was right, and this is a boast o. which they can not rob me. If they condemn my spoke them, I should have trembled for the boy poetry, I must even say with Cervantes, "Let lest the man should disappoint the hopes such them do better if they can!"-if my doctrine, they early genius had given birth to. It is not comjudge that which they do not understand; I shall mon to see so lively a fancy so correctly managed, except to the jurisdiction of the court, and plead, and so free from irregular exuberance, at so unCoram non judice. Even Horace could say, he experienced an age; fruitful, yet not wanton, and should neither be the plumper for the praise, nor gay without being tawdry. When schoolboys the leaner for the condemnation of his readers; write verse, if they have any fire at all, it generaland it will prove me wanting to myself indeed, if, ly spends itself in flashes, and transient sparks, supported by so many sublimer considerations which may indeed suggest an expectation of than he was master of, I can not sit loose to po- something better hereafter, but deserve not to be pularity, which, like the wind, bloweth where it much commended for any real merit of their own. listeth, and is equally out of our command. If Their wit is generally forced and false, and their you, and two or three more such as you, say, sublimity, if they affect any, bombast. I rememwell done, it ought to give me more contentment ber well when it was thus with me, and when a than if I could earn Churchill's laurels, and by turgid, noisy, unmeaning speech in a tragedy, the same means. which I should now laugh at, afforded me rap I wrote to Lord Dartmouth to apprise him of tures, and filled me with wonder. It is not in my intended present, and have received a most general till reading and observation have settled affectionate and obliging answer. the taste, that we can give the prize to the best I am rather pleased that you have adopted other writing, in preference to the worst. Much less sentiments respecting our intended present to the are we able to execute what is good ourselves. critical Doctor. I allow him to be a man of gi-But Lowth seems to have stepped into excellence gantic talents, and most profound learning, nor at once, and to have gained by intuition what we have I any doubts about the universality of his little folks are happy if we can learn at last, after knowledge. But by what I have seen of his ani- much labour of our own, and instruction of others. madversions on the poets, I feel myself much dis- The compliments he pays to the memory of King posed to question, in many instances, either his Charles, he would probably now retract, though candour or his taste. He finds fault too often, he be a bishop, and his majesty's zeal for episcolike a man that, having sought it very industrious pacy was one of the causes of his ruin. An age ly, is at last obliged to stick it on a pin's point, or two must pass, before some characters can be and look at it through a microscope; and I am properly understood. The spirit of party emsure I could easily convict him of having denied ploys itself in veiling their faults, and ascribing many beauties, and overlooked more. Whether to them virtues which they never possessed. See his judgment be in itself defective, or whether it Charles's face drawn by Clarendon, and it is a be warped by collateral considerations, a writer upon such subjects as I have chosen would probably find but little mercy at his hands. handsome portrait. See it more justly exhibited by Mrs. Macauley, and it is deformed to a degree that shocks us. Every feature expresses cunning, employing itself in the maintaining of tyrannyand dissimulation, pretending itself an advocate for truth. No winter since we knew Olney has kept us more confined than the present. We have not more than three times escaped into the fields, since last autumn. Man, a changeable creature My letters have already apprized you of that' in himself, seems to subsist best in a state of va- close and intimate connexion that took place beriety, as his proper element—a melancholy man at tween the lady you visited in Queen Ann-street, least is apt to grow sadly weary of the same walks, and us. Nothing could be more promising, though and the same pales, and to find that the same sudden in the commencement. She treated us scene will suggest the same thoughts perpetually. with as much unreservedness of communication, Though I have spoken of the utility of changes, as if we had been born in the same house, and we neither feel nor wish for any in our friend- educated together. At her departure, she herself ships, and consequently stand just where we did proposed a correspondence, and because writing with respect to your whole self. does not agree with your mother, proposed a cor-W. C. respondence with me. By her own desire I wrote to her under the assumed relation of a brother, and she to me as my sister. Yours, my dear sir, TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON., the contemplation of his own faculties and powers as a never-failing spring of comfort and content Feb. 16, 1782. He speaks even of the natural man as made in CARACCIOLI says, "There is something very the image of God, and supposes a resemblance bewitching in authorship, and that he who has of God to consist in a sort of independent selfonce written will write again." It may be so I sufficing and self-complacent felicity, which can can subscribe to the former part of his assertion hardly be enjoyed without the forfeiture of all hufrom my own experience, having never found an mility, and a flat denial of some of the most imamusement, among the many I have been obliged portant truths in Scripture. to have recourse to, that so well answered the "As a philosopher he refines to an excess, and purpose for which I used it. The quieting and his arguments, instead of convincing others, if composing effect of it was such, and so totally ab- pushed as far as they would go, would convict him sorbed have I sometimes been in my rhyming oc- of absurdity himself. When for instance he would cupation, that neither the past nor the future depreciate earthly riches by telling us that gold (those themes which to me are so fruitful in re- and diamonds are only matter modified in a partigret at other times), had any longer a share in my cular way, and thence concludes them not more contemplation. For this reason I wish, and have valuable in themselves than the dust under our often wished, since the fit left me, that it would feet, his consequence is false, and his cause is hurt seize me again; but hitherto I have wished it in by the assertion. It is that very modification that vain. I see no want of subjects, but I feel a total gives them both a beauty and a value—a value disability to discuss them. Whether it is thus with and a beauty recognised in Scripture, and by the other writers or not, I am ignorant, but I should universal consent of all well informed and civilized cuppese my case in this respect a little peculiar. nations. It is in vain to tell mankind, that gold The voluminous writers at least, whose vein of and dirt are equal, so long as their experience confancy seems always to have been rich in propor- vinces them of the contrary. It is necessary theretion to their occasions, can not have been so unlike, fore to distinguish between the thing itself and the and so unequal to themselves. There is this dif- abuse of it. Wealth is in fact a blessing, when ference between my poetship and the generality honestly acquired, and conscientiously employed; of them-they have been ignorant how much they and when otherwise, the man is to be blamed and have stood indebted to an Almighty power for the [not his treasure. How does the Scripture combat exercise of those talents they have supposed their the vice of covetousness? not by asserting that own. Whereas I know, and know most perfectly, gold is only earth exhibiting itself to us under a and am perhaps to be taught it to the last, that my particular modification, and therefore not worth power to think, whatever it be, and consequently seeking; but by telling us that covetousness is my power to compose, is, as much as my outward idolatry, that the love of money is the root of all form, afforded to me by the same hand that makes evil, that it has occasioned in some even the shipme, in any respect, to differ from a brute. This wreck of their faith, and is always, in whomsoever lesson, if not constantly inculcated, might perhaps it obtains, an abomination. be forgotten, or at least too slightly remembered. W. C. "A man might have said to Caraccioli, Give me your purse full of ducats, and I will give you my old wig; they are both composed of the same matter under different modifications. What could "Caraccioli* appears to me to have been a wise the philosopher have replied? he must have made man, and I believe he was a good man in a reli- the exchange, or have denied his own principles. gious sense. But his wisdom and his goodness Again, when speaking of sumptuous edifices, both savour more of the philosopher than the he calls a palace an assemblage of sticks and Christian. In the latter of these characters he stones, which a puff of wind may demolish, or a seems defective principally in this—that instead spark of fire consume; and thinks he has reduced of sending his reader to God as an inexhaustible a magnificent building and a cottage to the same source of happiness to his intelligent creatures, and exhorting him to cultivate communion with his Maker, he directs him to his own heart, and to • These cursory remarks of Cowper appear highly worthy of preservation. They were written on several scraps of pajer, without any title, and find perhaps their most suitable ace as a sequel to the letter in which he quoted the writer, whose character he has here sketched at full length, and with masterly hand. level, when he has told us that the latter viewed through an optic glass may be made to appear as large as the former, and that the former seen through the same glass inverted may be reduced to the pitiful dimensions of the latter; has he indeed carried his point? is he not rather imposing on the judgment of his readers, just as the glass would impose upon their senses? How is it possible to deduce a substantial argument in this case from an acknowledged deception of the sight? The |