Pope says truly Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow; some causes of sorrow, when an amiable and Christian friend departs; but the Scripture, so many more, and so much more important reasons to rejoice, that on such occasions, perhaps more Again-Rich and splendid situations in the remarkably than on any other, sorrow is turned church have been justly regarded as prizes, held into joy. The law of our land is affronted if we out to invite persons of good hopes, and ingenuous say the king dies, and insists on it that he only deattainments. Agreed. But the prize held out mises. This, which is a fiction, where a monarch in the Scripture is of a very different kind; and only is in question, in the case of a Christian is our ecclesiastical baits are too often snapped by reality and truth. He only lays aside a body, the worthless, and persons of no attainments at which it is his privilege to be encumbered with no all. They are indeed incentives to avarice and am- longer; and instead of dying, in that moment he bition, but not to those acquirements by which begins to live. But this the world does not unonly the ministerial function can be adorned-derstand, therefore the kings of it must go on dezeal for the salvation of men, humility, and self-mising to the end of the chapter.* W. C. denial. Mr. Paley and I therefore can not agree. Yours, my dear friend, W. C. TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ. May 26, 1783. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. June 8, 1783. OUR severest winter, commonly called the spring, is now over, and I find myself seated in my favourI FEEL for my uncle, and do not wonder that his ite recess, the green-house. In such a situation, loss afflicts him. A connexion that has subsisted so silent, so shady, where no human foot is heard, so many years could not be rent asunder without and where only my myrtles presume to peep in at great pain to the survivor. I hope however and the window, you may suppose I have no interrup. doubt not but when he has had a little more time tion to complain of, and that my thoughts are perfor recollection, he will find that consolation in his fectly at my command. But the beauties of the own family, which is not the lot of every father to spot are themselves an interruption, my attention be blessed with. It seldom happens that married being called upon by those very myrtles, by a doupersons live together so long, or so happily; but ble row of grass pinks just beginning to blossom, this, which one feels oneself ready to suggest as and by a bed of beans already in bloom; and you matter of alleviation, is the very circumstance are to consider it, if you please, as no small proof that aggravates his distress; therefore he misses of my regard, that though you have so many pow her the more, and feels that he can but ill spare erful rivals, I disengage myself from them all, and her. It is however a necessary tax which all who devote this hour entirely to you. live long must pay for their longevity, to lose many You are not acquainted with the Rev. Mr. Bull, whom they would be glad to detain (perhaps those of Newport, perhaps it is as well for you that you in whom all their happiness is centered), and to are not. You would regret still more than you do, see them step into the grave before them. In one that there are so many miles interposed between respect at least this is a merciful appointment: us. He spends part of the day with us to-morwhen life has lost that to which it owed its princi- row. A dissenter, but a liberal one; a man of pal relish, we may ourselves the more cheerfully letters and of genius; master of a fine imagination, resign it. I beg you would present him with my most affectionate remembrance, and tell him, if you think fit, how much I wish that the evening of his long day may be serene and happy. W. C. TO THE REV. J. NEWTON. May 31, 1783. WE rather rejoice than mourn with you on the or rather not master of it; an imagination which, when he finds himself in the company he loves, and can confide in, runs away with him into such fields of speculation, as amuse and enliven every other imagination that has the happiness to be of the party! At other times he has a tender and delicate sort of melancholy in his disposition, not less agreeable in its way. No men are better qualified for companions in such a world as this, than men of such a temperament. Every scene of life mind that has an equal mixture of melancholy and has two sides, a dark and a bright one, and the Dccasion of Mrs. C's death. In the case of believers, death has lost his sting, not only with respect to those he takes away, but with respect to The Task appears to have been begun between the wrisurvivors also. Nature indeed will always suggest ting of this letter and that which immediately follows vivacity is the best of all qualified for the contem- proof till the day itself shall prove it. My own senplation of either. He can be lively without levity, timents upon the subject appear to me perfectly and pensive without dejection. Such a man is scriptural, though I have no doubt that they differ Mr. Bull. But-he smokes tobacco-nothing is totally from those of all who have ever thought perfectabout it; being however so singular, and of no importance to the happiness of mankind, and being moreover difficult to swallow, just in proportion as they are peculiar, I keep them to myself. Nihil est ab omni Parte beatum. On the other side I sent you a something, a song if you please, composed last Thursdaythe incident happened the day before.* Yours, W. C. TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. I am, and always have been, a great observer of natural appearances, but I think not a superstitious one. The fallibility of those speculations which lead men of fanciful minds to interpret Scripture by the contingencies of the day, is evident from this consideration, that what the God of the Scriptures has seen fit to conceal, he will not as the God of nature publish. He is one and the June 13, 1783. same in both capacities, and consistent with himI THANK you for your Dutch communications. self; and his purpose, if he designs a secret, imThe suffrage of such respectable men must have penetrable, in whatever way we attempt to open given you much pleasure, a pleasure only to be ex- it. It is impossible however for an observer of naceeded by the consciousness you had before of hav-tural phenomena not to be struck with the singuing published truth, and of having served a good larity of the present season. The fogs I mentioned master by doing so. in my last still continue, though till yesterday the MY DEAR FRIEND, I have always regretted that your ecclesiastical earth was as dry as intense heat could make it. history went no further; I never saw a work that The sun continues to rise and set without his rays, I thought more likely to serve the cause of truth, and hardly shines at noon, even in a cloudless sky. nor history applied to so good a purpose. The At eleven last night the moon was a dull red, she facts incontestable, the grand observations upon was nearly at her highest elevation, and had the them all irrefragable, and the style, in my judg. colour of heated brick. She would naturally, I ment, incomparably better than that of Robertson know, have such an appearance looking through or Gibbon. I would give you my reasons for think- a misty atmosphere; but that such an atmosphere ing so, if I had not a very urgent one for declining should obtain for so long a time, and in a country it. You have no ear for such music, whoever where it has not happened in my remembrance may be the performer. What you added, but never even in the winter, is rather remarkable. We printed, is quite equal to what has appeared, have had more thunder storms than have consisted which I think might have encouraged you to pro- well with the peace of the fearful maidens in Olceed, though you missed that freedom in writing ney, though not so many as have happened in which you found before. While you were at places at no great distance, nor so violent. YesOlney this was at least possible; in a state of re-terday morning, however, at seven o'clock, two firetirement you had leisure, without which I suppose balls burst either in the steeple or close to it. WilPaul himself could not have written his Epistles. liam Andrews saw them meet at that point, and But those days are fled, and every hope of a continuation is fled with them. immediately after saw such a smoke issue from the apertures in the steeple as soon rendered it invisiThe day of judgment is spoken of not only as a ble: the noise of the explosion surpassed all the surprise, but a snare-a snare upon all the in- noises I ever heard you would have thought that habitants of the earth. A difference indeed will a thousand sledge-hammers were battering great obtain in favour of the godly, which is, that though stones to powder, all in the same instant. The a snare, a sudden, in some sense an unexpected, weather is still as hot, and the air as full of vaand in every sense an awful event, yet it will find pour, as if there had been neither rain nor thunder them prepared to meet it. But the day being thus all the summer. characterised, a wide field is consequently open to There was once a periodical paper published, conjecture; some will look for it at one period, and called Mist's Journal: a name well adapted to the some at another; we shall most of us prove at last sheet before you. Misty however as I am, I do to have been mistaken, and if any should prove to not mean to be mystical, but to be understood, like have guessed aright, they will reap no advantage, an almanack-maker, according to the letter. As wonderful event the felicity of their conjecture being incapable of poet, nevertheless, I claim, if any should follow, a right to apply all and every such post-prognostic, to the purposes of the tragic muse. Yours, W. C. ⚫ Here followed his song of the Rose. a TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. MY DEAR FRIEND, June 17, 1783. the same great teacher who taught him to em broider for the service of the sanctuary, and which amounts almost to as great a blessing as the gift of tongues. day. Yours, my dear friend, W. C. TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. July 27, 1783. YOUR letter reached Mr. S The summer is passing away, and hitherto has was with him; whether it wrought any change in hardly been either seen or felt. Perpetual clouds his opinion of that gentleman, as a preacher, I intercept the influence of the sun, and for the most know not, but for my own part I give you full part there is an autumnal coldness in the weather, credit for the soundness and rectitude of yours. No though we are almost upon the eve of the longest man was ever scolded out of his sins. The heart, corrupt as it is, and because it is so, grows angry We are well, and always mindful of you; be if it be not treated with some management and mindful of us, and assured that we love you. good manners, and scolds again. A surly mastiff will bear perhaps to be stroked, though he will growl even under that operation, but if you touch him roughly, he will bite. There is no grace that the spirit of self can counterfeit with more success than a religious zeal. A man thinks he is fighting MY DEAR FRIEND, for Christ, and he is fighting for his own notions. You can not have more pleasure in receiving a He thinks that he is skilfully searching the hearts letter from me, than I should find in writing it, of others, when he is only gratifying the malignity were it not almost impossible in such a place to of his own, and charitably supposes his hearers find a subject. destitute of all grace, that he may shine the more I live in a world abounding with incidents, upon in his own eyes by comparison. When he has which many grave, and perhaps some profitable performed this notable task, he wonders that they observations might be made; but those incidents are not converted: 'he has given it them soundly, never reaching my unfortunate ears, both the enand if they do not tremble, and confess that God tertaining narrative and the reflection it might is in him of a truth, he gives them up as reprobate, suggest are to me annihilated and lost. I look incorrigible, and lost for ever.' But a man that back to the past week, and say, what did it proloves me, if he sees me in an error, will pity me, duce? I ask the same question of the week preand endeavour calmly to convince me of it, and ceding, and duly receive the same answer from persuade me to forsake it. If he has great and both—nothing!—A situation like this, in which I good news to tell me, he will not do it angrily, and am as unknown to the world, as I am ignorant in much heat and discomposure of spirit. It is not of all that passes in it, in which I have nothing to therefore easy to conceive on what ground a minis-flo but to think, would exactly suit me, were my ter can justify a conduct which only proves that subjects of meditation as agreeable as my leisure is he does not understand his errand. The absurdity uninterrupted. My passion for retirement is not of it would certainly strike him, if he were not at all abated, after so many years spent in the himself deluded. most sequestered state, but rather increased. A A people will always love a minister, if a minis- circumstance I should esteem wonderful to a deter seems to love his people. The old maxim, Sigree not to be accounted for, considering the conmile agit in simile, is in no case more exactly veri-dition of my mind, did I not know, that we think fied: therefore you were beloved at Olney, and as we are made to think, and of course approve and if you preached to the Chickesawes, and Chach- prefer, as Providence, who appoints the bounds taws, would be equally beloved by them. TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. of our habitation, chooses for us. Thus am I both free and a prisoner at the same time. The world is before me; I am not shut up in the Bastile; there are no moats about my castle, no locks upon my gates, of which I have not the key-but an MY DEAR FRIEND, June 19, 1783. invisible, uncontrollable agency, a local attachTHE translation of your letters into Dutch was ment, an inclination more forcible than I ever felt, news that pleased me much. I intended plain even to the place of my birth, serves me for prison prose, but a rhyme obtruded itself, and I became walls, and for bounds which I can not pass. In poetical when I least expected it. When you former years I have known sorrow, and before I wrote those letters you did not dream that you had ever tasted of spiritual trouble. The effect were designed for an apostle to the Dutch. Yet was an abhorrence of the scene in which I had so it proves, and such among many others are the suffered so much, and a weariness of those objects advantages we derive from the art of printing: an which I had so long looked at with an eye of desart in which indisputably man was instructed by pondency and dejection. But it is otherwise with me now. The same cause subsisting, and in a binet of perfumes? It is at this moment fronted much more powerful degree, fails to produce it's with carnations and balsams, with mignionette and natural effect. The very stones in the garden- roses, with jessamine and woodbine, and wants walls are my intimate acquaintance. I should nothing but your pipe to make it truly Arabian; miss almost the minutest object, and be disagreea- a wilderness of sweets! The sofa is ended but bly affected by its removal, and am persuaded that not finished, a paradox which your natural acuwere it possible I could leave this incommodious men, sharpened by habits of logical attention, will nook for a twelvemonth, I should return to it again enable you to reconcile in a moment. Do not imwith rapture, and be transported with the sight agine, however, that I lounge over it—on the conof objects which to all the world beside would be trary, I find it severe exercise to mould and fashion at least indifferent; some of them perhaps, such as if to my mind!* the ragged thatch and the tottering walls of the neighbouring cottages, disgusting. But so it is, and it is so, because here is to be my abode, and because such is the appointment of Him that placed me in it Iste terrarum mihi præter omnes ed by the ocean is the only sounding-board. I was always an admirer of thunder-storms, even before I knew whose voice I heard in them; but especially an admirer of thunder rolling over the great waters. There is something singularly majestic in the sound of it at sea, where the eye and the ear have uninterrupted opportunity of observation, and the concavity above being made spaIt is the place of all the world I love the most, not cious reflects it with more advantage. I have confor any happiness it affords me, but because here sequently envied you your situation, and the enI can be miserable with most convenience to my-joyment of those refreshing breezes that belong to self, and with the least disturbance to others. it. We have indeed been regaled with some of You wonder, and (I dare say) unfeignedly, be- those bursts of ethereal music.-The peals have cause you do not think yourself entitled to such been as loud, by the report of a gentleman who praise, that I prefer your style, as an historian, to lived many years in the West Indies, as were ever that of the two most renowned writers of history heard in those islands, and the flashes as splendid. the present day has seen. That you may not sus-But when the thunder preaches, an horizon boundpect me of having said more than my real opinion I have had but little leisure, strange as it may will warrant, I will tell you why. In your style I see no affectation. In every line of theirs I see seem, and that little I devoted for a month after nothing else. They disgust me always, Robertson your departure to Madame Guion. I have made with his pomp and his strut, and Gibbon with his fair copies of all the pieces I have produced on this finical and French manners. You are as correct last occasion, and will put them into your hands as they. You express yourself with as much pre-when we meet. They are yours, to serve as you cision. Your words are ranged with as much please; you may take and leave, as you like, for propriety, but you do not set your periods to a tune. They discover a perpetual desire to exhibit themselves to advantage, whereas your subject engrosses you. They sing, and you say; which, as history is a thing to be said, and not sung, is, in my judgment, very much to your advantage. A writer that despises their tricks, and is yet neither inelegant nor inharmonious, proves himself, by that single circumstance, a man of superior judgment and ability to them both You have my reasons. I honour a manly character, in which good sense, and a desire of doing good, are the predominant features-but affectation is an emetic. W. C. TO THE REV. WILLIAM BULL. my purpose is already served; they have amused me, and I have no further demand upon them. The lines upon friendship, however, which were not sufficiently of a piece with the others, will not now be wanted. I have some other little things, which I will communicate when time shall serve; but I can not now transcribe them. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. MY DEAR WILLIAM, August 4, 1783. I FEEL myself sensibly obliged by the interest you take in the success of my productions. Your feelings upon the subject are such as I should have myself, had I an opportunity of calling Johnson aside to make the enquiry you propose. But I am pretty well prepared for the worst, and so long as I have the opinion of a few capable judges in my favour, and am thereby convinced that I have neither disgraced myself nor my subject, shall not feel myself disposed to any extreme anxiety August 3, 1783. YOUR seaside situation, your beautiful prospects, your fine rides, and the sight of the palaces which you have seen, we have not envied you; but are glad that you have enjoyed them. Why should The prosecution of the Task seems to have been deferred we envy any man? Is not our green-house a ca-till towards the end of October about the sale. To aim with success at the spirit-in cleaning out their cages, I placed that which I ual good of mankind, and to become popular by had in hand upon the table, while the other hung writing on scriptural subjects, were an unreasona- against the wall: the windows and the doors stood ble ambition, even for a poet to entertain in days wide open. I went to fill the fountain at the pump, like these. Verse may have many charms, but and on my return was not a little surprised to find has none powerful enough to conquer the aversion a goldfinch sitting on the top of the cage I had of a dissipated age to such instruction. Ask the been cleaning, and singing to and kissing the goldquestion therefore boldly, and be not mortified finch within. I approached him, and he discoeven though he should shake his head and drop vered no fear; still nearer, and he discovered none. his chin; for it is no more than we have reason to I advanced my hand towards him, and he took no expect. We will lay the fault upon the vice of notice of it. I seized him, and supposed I had the times, and we will acquit the poet. caught a new bird, but casting my eye upon the other cage perceived my mistake. Its inhabitant, during my absence, had contrived to find an open I am glad you were pleased with my Latin ode, and indeed with my English dirge as much as I was myself. The tune laid me under a disadvan- ing, where the wire had been a little bent, and tage, obliging me to write in Alexandrines; which made no other use of the escape it afforded him, I suppose would suit no ear but a French one; than to salute his friend, and to converse with neither did I intend any thing more than that the him more intimately than he had done before. I subject and the words should be sufficiently ac- returned him to his proper mansion, but in vain. commodated to the music. The ballad is a spe- In less than a minute he had thrust his little percies of poetry I believe peculiar to this country, son through the aperture again, and again perched equally adapted to the drollest and the most tragi- upon his neighbour's cage, kissing him as at the cal subjects. Simplicity and ease are its proper first, and singing, as if transported with the fortucharacteristics. Our forefathers excelled in it; nate adventure. I could not but respect such but we moderns have lost the art. It is observed, friendship, as for the sake of its gratification had that we have few good English odes. But to twice declined an opportunity to be free, and conmake amends, we have many excellent ballads, senting to their union, resolved that for the future not inferior perhaps in true poetical merits to some one cage should hold them both. I am glad of such of the very best odes that the Greek or Latin lan- incidents. For at a pinch, and when I need enguages have to boast of. It is a sort of composi-tertainment, the versification of them serves to dition I was ever fond of, and if graver matters had vert me. Yours ever, W. C. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. Sept. 7, 1783. not called me another way, should have addicted I transcribe for you a piece of Madam Guion, myself to it more than to any other. I inherit a not as the best, but as being shorter than many, taste for it from my father, who succeeded well in and as good as most of them. it himself, and who lived at a time when the best pieces in that way were produced. What can be prettier than Gay's ballad, or rather Swift's, Arbuthnot's, Pope's, and Gay's, in the What do ye call it-""Twas when the seas were roaring?" I have MY DEAR FRIEND, been well informed that they all contributed, and that the most celebrated association of clever fellows this country ever saw, did not think it beneath them to unite their strength and abilities in the composition of a song. The success however The French poetess is certainly chargeable with answered their wishes. The ballads that Bourne the fault you mention, though I thought it not so has translated, beautiful in themselves, are still glaring in the piece I sent you. I have endeavoured more beautiful in his version of them, infinitely indeed, in all the translations I have made, to cure surpassing in my judgment all that Ovid or Tibullus have left behind them. They are quite as elegant, and far more touching and pathetic than the tenderest strokes of either. So long a silence needs an apology. I have been hindered by a three-weeks visit from our Hoxton friends, and by a cold and feverish complaint, which are but just removed. her of that evil, either by the suppression of passages exceptionable upon that account, or by a more sober and respectful manner of expression. Still however she will be found to have conversed So much for ballads, and ballad writers-"A familiarly with God, but I hope not fulsomely, worthy subject," you will say, "for a man whose nor so as to give reasonable disgust to a religious head might be filled with better things:" and it is reader. That God should deal familiarly with filled with better things, but to so ill a purpose, man, or which is the same thing, that he should that I thrust into it all manner of topics that may permit man to deal familiarly with him, seems prove more amusing; as for instance I have two not very difficult to conceive, or presumptuous to goldfinches, which in the summer occupy the suppose, when some things are taken into consigreen-house. A few days since, being employed deration. Wo to the sinner that shall dare to take |