I am again at Johnson's in the shape of a poem to his friends. The influence of one I have felt in blank verse, consisting of six books, and called myself, for which none of them would blame meThe Task. I began it about this time twelve-I mean the desire of surprising agreeably. And month, and writing sometimes an hour in the day, if I have denied myself this pleasure in your insometimes half a one, and sometimes two hours, stance, it was only to give myself a greater, by have lately finished it. I mentioned it not sooner, eradicating from your mind any little weeds of susbecause almost to the last I was doubtful whether picion, that might still remain in it, that any man I should ever bring it to a conclusion, working living is nearer to me than yourself. Had not often in such distress of mind, as, while it spurred this consideration forced up the lid of my strong me to the work, at the same time threatened to box like a lever, it would have kept its contents disqualify me for it. My bookseller I suppose will with an invisible closeness to the last; and the first be as tardy as before, I do not expect to be born news that either you or any of my friends would into the world till the month of March, when I have heard of the Task, they would have received that and the crocuses shall peep together. You may from the public papers. But you know now, assure yourself that I shall take my first opportu- neither as a poet, nor a man, do I give to any man nity to wait on you. I mean likewise to gratify a precedence in my estimation at your expense. myself by obtruding my muse upon Mr. Bacon. Adieu, my dear friend! we are well, and love Yours and Mrs. Newton's, W. C. you.

TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.

MY DEAR FRIEND

Nov. 1, 1784.

I am proceeding with my new work (which at present I feel myself much inclined to call by the name of Tirocinium) as fast as the muse permits. It has reached the length of seven hundred lines, and will probably receive an addition of two or three hundred more. When you see Mr. perhaps you will not find it difficult to procure from him half a dozen franks, addressed to yourself, and dated the fifteenth of December, in which case, they will all go to the post filled with my lucubrations, on the evening of that day. I do not name an earlier, because I hate to be hurried; and Johnson can not want it sooner than, thus managed, it will reach him.

WERE I to delay my answer, I must yet write without a frank at last, and may as well therefore write without one now, especially feeling, as I do, a desire to thank you for your friendly offices so well performed. I am glad for your sake, as well I am not sorry that John Gilpin, though hitherto as for my own, that you succeeded in the first instance, and that the first trouble proved the last. I he has been nobody's child, is likely to be owned at am willing too to consider Johnson's readiness to last. Here and there I can give him a touch that accept a second volume of mine, as an argument I think will mend him, the language in some that at least he was no loser by the former. I col- places not being quite so quaint and old-fashioned lect from it some reasonable hope that the volume as it should be; and in one of the stanzas there is in question may not wrong him neither. My a false rhyme. When I have thus given the finishimagination tells me (for I know you interest your-ing stroke to his figure, I mean to grace him with self in the success of my productions) that your two mottos, a Greek and a Latin one, which, heart fluttered when you approached Johnson's when the world shall see that I have only a little door, and that it felt itself discharged of a burthen one of three words to the volume itself, and none when you came out again. You did well to men- to the books of which it consists, they will perhaps tion it at the Ts; they will now know that understand as a stricture upon that pompous disyou do not pretend a share in my confidence, play of literature, with which some authors take whatever be the value of it, greater than you ac- occasion to crowd their titles. Knox, in particutually possess. I wrote to Mr. Newton by the last lar, who is a sensible man too, has not, I think, fewer than half a dozen to his Essays. post, to tell him that I was gone to the press again. He will be surprised and perhaps not pleased. But I think he can not complain, for he keeps his own authorly secrets without participating them with me. I do not think myself in the least [TO THE REV. WILLIAM BULL.] injured by his reserve; neither should I, if he were November 8, 1784. to publish a whole library without favouring me THE Task, as you know, is gone to the press: with any previous notice of his intentions. In these cases it is no violation of the laws of friend- since it went I have been employed in writing anoship not to communicate, though there must be a ther poem, which I am now transcribing, and which friendship where the communication is made. But in a short time I design shall follow. It is enti many reasons may concur in disposing a writer to tled, Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools: the bukeep his work secret, and none of them injurious siness and purpose of it are, to censure the want

Y

Adieu, W. C...

of discipline, and the scandalous inattention to morals, that obtain in them, especially in the largest; and to recommend private tuition as a mode of education preferable on all accounts; to call upon fathers to become tutors of their own sons, where that is practicable; to take home a domestic

tutor, where it is not; and if neither can be done, to place them under the care of such a man, as he to whom I am writing, some rural parson, whose

attention is limited to a few.

TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.
November, 1784.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.
MY DEAR FRIEND,

Nov. 27, 1784." lication, and all the pleas that you urge in behalf ALL the interest that you take in my new pubread your letter, struck me as so many proofs of of your right to my confidence, the moment I had your regard; of a friendship, in which distance and time make no abatement. But it is difficult to adjust opposite claims to the satisfaction of all parties. I have done my best, and must leave it to your candour to put a just interpretation upon all that has passed, and to give me credit for it, as To condole with you on the death of a mother a certain truth, that whatever seeming defects, in aged eighty-seven would be absurd-rather, there- point of attention and attachment to you, my confore, as is reasonable, I congratulate you on the duct on this occasion may have appeared to have almost singular felicity of having enjoyed the com- been chargeable with, I am in reality as clear of pany of so amiable and so near a relation so long. all real ones, as you would wish to find me. Your lot and mine in this respect have been very I send you enclosed, in the first place, a copy of different, as indeed in almost every other. Your the advertisement to the reader, which accounts mother lived to see you rise, at least to see you for my title, not otherwise easily accounted forcomfortably established in the world. Mine, dy- secondly, what is called an argument, or a summaing when I was six years old, did not live to see ry of the contents of each book, more circumstanme sink in it. You may remember with pleasure, tial and diffuse by far than that which I have sent while you live, a blessing vouchsafed to you so to the press. It will give you a pretty accurate long; and I, while I live, must regret a comfort of acquaintance with my matter, though the tenons which I was deprived so early. I can truly say, and mortises, by which the several passages are that not a week passes (perhaps I might with equal connected, and let into each other, can not be exveracity say a day) in which I do not think of her. plained in a syllabus—and lastly, an extract as you Such was the impression her tenderness made up- desired. The subject of it I am sure will please on me, though the opportunity she had for show-you, and as I have admitted into my description ing it was so short. But the ways of God are no images but what are scriptural, and have aimequal-and when I reflect on the pangs she would ed as exactly as I could at the plain and simple have suffered, had she been a witness of all mine, sublimity of the scripture language, I have hopes I see more cause to rejoice, than to mourn, that she was hidden in the grave so soon.

We have, as you say, lost a lively and sensible neighbour in Lady Austen, but we have been long accustomed to a state of retirement within one degree of solitude, and being naturally, lovers of still life, can relapse into our former duality without being unhappy at the change. To me indeed a third is not necessary, while I can have the companion I have had these twenty years.

the manner of it may please you too. As far as the numbers and diction are concerned, it may serve pretty well for a sample of the whole. But the subjects being so various, no single passage can in all respects be a specimen of a book at large.

My principal purpose is to allure the reader, by character, by scenery, by imagery, and such poetical embellishments, to the reading of what may profit him. Subordinately to this, to combat that predeliction in favour of a metropolis, that beggars I am gone to the press again; a volume of mine and exhausts the country, by evacuating it of all will greet your hands some time either in the course its principal inhabitants: and collaterally, and as of the winter, or early in the spring. You will far as is consistent with this double intention, to find it perhaps on the whole more entertaining than have a stroke at vice, vanity, and folly, wherever the former, as it treats a great variety of subjects, I find them. I have not spared the universities. and those, at least the most, of a sublunary kind. A letter which appeared in the General Evening It will consist of a poem in six books, called the Post of Saturday, said to have been received by a Task. To which will be added another, which I finished yesterday, called, I believe, Tirocinium, on the subject of education.

general officer, and by him sent to the press, as worthy of public notice, and which has all the appearance of authenticity, would alone justify the severest censure of those bodies, if any such justification were wanted. By way of supplement to what I have written on this subject, I have added On the 21st of this month the writer commenced his a poem, called Tirocinium, which is in rhyme. It treats of the scandalous relaxation of that disci

You perceive that I have taken your advice, and given the pen no rest.*

ranslation of Homer.

W. C.

pline that obtains in almost all schools universally, sion following. In my last I recommended it to out especially in the largest, which are so negli- you to procure franks for the conveyance of Tirogent in the article of morals, that boys are de- cinium, dated on a day therein mentioned, and the bauched in general the moment they are capable earliest which at that time I could venture to apof being so. It recommends the office of tutor to point. It has happened however that the poem is the father, where there is no real impediment; the finished a month sooner than I expected, and twoexpedient of a domestic tutor, where there is; and thirds of it are at this time fairly transcribed; an the disposal of boys into the hands of a respectable accident to which the riders of a Parnassian steed country clergyman, who limits his attention to two, are liable, who never know, before they mount in all cases where they can not be conveniently him, at what rate he will choose to travel. If he educated at home. Mr. Unwin happily affording be indisposed to despatch, it is impossible to acceme an instance in point, the poem is inscribed to lerate his pace; if otherwise, equally impossible to him. You will now I hope command your hun- stop him. Therefore my errand to you at this ger to be patient, and be satisfied with the luncheon time is to cancel the former assignation, and to that I send, till dinner comes. That piecemeal inform you that by whatever means you please, perusal of the work, sheet by sheet, would be so and as soon as you please, the piece in question disadvantageous to the work itself, and therefore will be ready to attend you; for without exerting so uncomfortable to me, that (I dare say) you will any extraordinary diligence, I shall have completed wave your desire of it. A poem, thus disjointed, the transcript in a week. can not possibly be fit for any, body's inspection but the author's.

The critics will never know that four lines of it were composed while I had a dose of ipecacuanha Tully's rule- Nulla dies sine lineâ’—will make on my stomach; in short, that I was delivered of a volume in less time than one would suppose. I the emetic and the verses in the same moment. adhered to it so rigidly, that though more than once. Knew they this, they would at least allow me to I found three lines as many as I had time to com- be a poet of singular industry, and confess that I pass, still I wrote; and finding occasionally, and lose no time. I have heard of poets who have as it might happen, a more fluent vein, the abun- found cathartics of sovereign use, when they had dance of one day made me amends for the barren- occasion to be particularly brilliant. Dryden alness of the other. But I do not mean to write ways used them, and in commemoration of it, blank verse again. Not having the music of rhyme, it requires so close an attention to the pause, and the cadence, and such a peculiar mode of expression, as to render it, to me at least, the most difficult species of poetry that I have ever meddled with. I am obliged to you, and to Mr. Bacon, for your kind remembrance of me when you meet. No artist can excel as he does, without the finest feelings; and every man that has the finest feelings is, and must be, amiable. Adieu, my dear friend! Affectionately yours, W. C.

TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.

MY DEAR WILLIAM,

1784.

Bayes in the Rehearsal is made to inform the audience that in a poetical emergency he always had recourse to stewed prunes. But I am the only poet who has dared to reverse the prescription, and whose enterprise, having succeeded to admiration, warrants him to recommend an emetic to all future bards, as the most infallible means of producing a fluent and easy versification.

My love to all your family.

Adieu, W. C.

TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN..

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Nov. 29, 1784. I AM happy that you are pleased, and accept it THE slice which (you observe) has been taken as an earnest that I shall not at least disgust the from the top of the sheet, it lost before I began to public. For though I know your partiality to me, write: but being a part of the paper which is sel- I know at the same time with what laudable tendom used, I thought it would be pity to discard or derness you feel for your own reputation, and that to degrade to meaner purposes, the fair and ample for the sake of that most delicate part of your proremnant, on account of so immaterial a defect. I perty, though you would not criticise me with an therefore have destined it to be the vehicle of a let- unfriendly and undue severity, you would however ter, which you will accept as entire, though a law-beware of being satisfied too hastily, and with nc yer perhaps would, without much difficulty, prove warrantable cause of being so. I called you the it to be but a fragment. The best recompense I tutor of your two sons, in contemplation of the can make you for writing without a frank is, to certainty of that event-it is a fact in suspense, propose it to you to take your revenge by return- not in fiction. ing an answer under the sanie predicament; and

My principal errand to you now is to give you the best reason I can give for doing it is the occa- information on the following subject: The moment

Mr. Newton knew (and I took care that he should was peculiar. So is Thomson's. He that should learn it first from me) that I had communicated to write like either of them, would in my judgment you what I had concealed from him, and that you deserve the name of a copyist, but not a poet. A were my authorship's go-between with Johnson judicious and sensible reader therefore, like youron this occasion, he sent me a most friendly letter self, will not say that my manner is not good, beindeed, but one in every line of which I could hear cause it does not resemble theirs, but will rather the soft murmur of something like mortification, consider what it is in itself, Blank verse is susthat could not be entirely suppressed. It contained ceptible of a much greater diversification of mannothing however that you yourself would have ner, than verse in rhyme: and why the modern blamed, or that I had not every reason to consider writers of it have all thought proper to cast their as evidence of his regard to me. He concluded numbers alike, I know not. Certainly it was not the subject with desiring to know something of necessity that compelled them to it. I flatter mymy plan, to be favoured with an extract, by way self however that I have avoided that sameness of specimen, or (which he should like better still) with others which would entitle me to nothing but with wishing me to order Johnson to send him a a share in one common oblivion with them all. It proof as fast as they were printed off. Determin- is possible that, as a reviewer of my former volume ing not to accede to this last request for many rea- found cause to say that he knew not to what class sons (but especially because I would no more show of writers to refer me, the reviewer of this, whoever my poem piecemeal, than I would my house if I he shall be, may see occasion to remark the same had one; the merits of the structure, in either case, singularity. At any rate, though as little apt to being equally liable to suffer by such a partial be sanguine as most men, and more prone to fear view of it), I have endeavoured to compromise the and despond, than to overrate my own producdifference between us, and to satisfy him without tions, I am persuaded that I shall not forfeit any disgracing myself. The proof sheets I have abso- thing by this volume that I gained by the last. As lutely though civilly refused. But I have sent him to the title, I. take it to be the best that is to be. a copy of the arguments of each book, more di- had. It is not possible that a book, including such lated and circumstantial than those inserted in the a variety of subjects, and in which no particular work; and to these I have added an extract as he one is predominant, should find a title adapted to Jesired; selecting, as most suited to his taste them all. In such a case, it seemed almost necesThe view of the restoration of all things-which sary to accommodate the name to the incident that vou recollect to have seen near the end of the last gave birth to the poem; nor does it appear to me, book. I hold it necessary to tell you this, lest, if that because I performed more than my task, thereyou should call upon him, he should startle you fore the Task is not a suitable title. A house by discovering a degree of information upon the would still be a house, though the builder of it subject, which you could not otherwise know how should make it ten times as big as he at first into reconcile, or to account for. tended. I might indeed, following the example You have executed your commissions à mer- of the Sunday newsmonger, call it the Olio. But veille. We not only approve, but admire. No I should do myself wrong: for though it have apology was wanting for the balance struck at the much variety, it has I trust no confusion. bottom, which we accounted rather a beauty than a deformity. Pardon a poor poet, who can not speak even of pounds, shillings, and pence, but in his own way.

For the same reason none of the interior titles apply themselves to the contents at large of that book to which they belong. They are, every one of them, taken either from the leading (I should I have read Lunardi with pleasure. He is a say the introductory) passage of that particular uvely, sensible young fellow, and I suppose a very book, or from that which makes the most conspifavourable sample of the Italians. When I look cuous figure in it. Had I set off with a design to at his picture, I can fancy that I see in him that good sense and courage that no doubt were legible in the face of a young Roman, two thousand years

ago.

Your affectionate W. C.

Dec. 13, 1784.

write upon a gridiron, and had I actually written near two hundred lines upon that utensil, as I have upon the Sofa, the gridiron should have been my title. But the Sofa being, as I may say, the starting post from which I addressed myself to the long race that I soon conceived a design to run, it acquired a just pre-eminence in my account, and was very worthily advanced to the titular honours it enjoys, its right being at least so far a good one, that no word in the language could pretend a bet

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON, MY DEAR FRIEND, HAVING imitated no man, I may reasonably ter. hope that I snall not incur the disadvantage of a The Time-piece appears to me (though by comparison with my betters. Milton's manner some accident the import of the title has escaped

you) to have a degree of propriety beyond most his two sons only"-by way of insinuating, that of them. The book to which it belongs is in-you are perfectly satisfied with your present tended to strike the hour that gives notice of ap- charge, and that you do not wish for more; thus proaching judgment, and dealing pretty largely in meaning to obviate an illiberal construction, which the signs of the times, seems to be denominated, we are both of us incapable of deserving. But as it is, with a sufficient degree of accommodation the same caution not having appeared to you to be to the subject. necessary, I am very willing and ready to suppose that it is not so..

name.

As to the word worm, it is the very appellation which Milton himself, in a certain passage of the I intended in my last to have given you my reaParadise Lost, gives to the serpent. Not having sons for the compliment I have paid Bishop Bagot, the book at hand, I can not now refer to it, but I lest, knowing that I have no connexion with him, am sure of the fact. I am mistaken, too, if Shak-you should suspect me of having done it rather speare's Cleopatra do not call the asp, by which too much at a venture. In the first place then, I she thought fit to destroy herself, by the same wished the world to know that I have no objecBut not having read the play these five- tion to a bishop, quià bishop. In the second and-twenty years, I will not affirm it. They are, place, the brothers were all five my schoolfellows, however, without all doubt convertible terms. A and very amiable and valuable boys they were. worm is a small serpent, and a serpent is a large Thirdly, Lewis, the bishop, had been rudely and worm. And when an epithet significant of the most terrible species of those creatures is adjoined, the idea is surely sufficiently ascertained. No animal of the vermicular or serpentine kind is crested, but the most formidable of all. ́

Yours affectionately, W. C.

TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Dec. 18, 1784.

coarsely treated in the Monthly Review, on account of a sermon, which appeared to me, when 1 read their extract from it, to deserve the highest commendations, as exhibiting explicit proof both of his good sense, and his unfeigned piety. For these causes me thereunto moving, I felt myself happy in an opportunity to do public honour to a worthy man, who had been publicly traduced; and indeed the Reviewers themselves have since repented of their aspersions, and have traveled not a little out of their way in order to retract them, I CONDOLE with you, that you had the trouble having taken occasion by the sermon preached at to ascend St. Paul's in vain, but at the same time the bishop's visitation at Norwich, to say every congratulate you, that you escaped an ague. I thing handsome of his lordship, who, whatever should be very well pleased to have a fair pros- might be the merit of the discourse, in that inpect of a balloon under sail, with a philosopher or stance at least could himself lay claim to no other two on board, but at the same time should be very than that of being a hearer. sorry to expose myself, for any length of time, to Since I wrote, I have had a letter from Mr. the rigour of the upper regions, at this season, for Newton, that did not please me, and returned an the sake of it. The travellers themselves I sup- answer to it, that possibly may not have pleased pose are secured from all injuries of the weather him. We shall come together again soon (I supby that fervency of spirit and agitation of mind, pose) upon as amicable terms as usual. But at which must needs accompany them in their flight; present he is in a state of mortification. He advantages which the more composed and phleg- would have been pleased, had the book passed out matic spectator is not equally possessed of. of his hand into yours, or even out of yours into The inscription of the poem is more your own his, so that he had previously had opportunity affair than any other person's. You have, there-to advise a measure which I pursued without his fore, an undoubted right to fashion it to your recommendation, and had seen the poems in manumind, nor have I the least objection to the slight script. But my design was to pay you a whole alteration that you have made in it: I inserted compliment, and I have done it. If he says more what you have erased for a reason that was per- on the subject, I shall speak freely, and perhaps haps rather chimerical than solid. I feared, how- please him less than I have done already. ever, that the Reviewers, or some of my sagacious readers, not more merciful than they, might suspect that there was a secret design in the wind; and that author and friend had consulted in what manner author might introduce friend to public notice, as a clergyman every way qualified to en- MY DEAR FRIEND,' tertain a pupil or two, if peradventure any gen-| I AM neither Mede nor Persian, neither am I tleman of fortune were in want of a tutor for his the son of any such, but was born at Great Berkchildren. I therefore added the words-" And of hamsted, in Hertfordshire, and yet I can neither

Yours, with our love to all, W. C.

TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.

Christmas Eve, 1784.