TO JOHN JOHNSON, ESQ.
Weston, Feb. 27, 1791.
Now, my dearest Johnny, I must tell thee in few words, how much I love and am obliged to thee for thy affectionate services.
My Cambridge honours are all to be ascribed to you, and to you only. Yet you are but a little man, and a little man, into the bargain, who have kicked the mathematics, their idol, out of your study. So important are the endings which Providence frequently connects with small beginnings. Had you been here, I could have furnished you with much employment; for I have so dealt with your fair MS. in the course of my polishing and improving, that I have almost blotted out the whole. Such, however, as it is, I must now send it to the printer, and he must be content with it, for there is not time to make a fresh copy. We are now printing the second book of the Odyssey.
Should the Oxonians bestow none of their notice on me on this occasion, it will happen singularly enough, that, as Pope received all his University honours in the subscription way from Oxford, and none at all from Cambridge, so I shall have received all mine from Cambridge, and none from Oxford. This is the more likely to be the case, because I understand, that on whatsoever occasion either of those learned bodies thinks fit to move, the other always makes it a point to sit still, thus proving its superiority.
I shall send up your letter to Lady Hesketh in a day or two, knowing that the intelligence contained in it will afford her the greatest pleasure. Know likewise, for your own gratification, that all the Scotch Universities have subscribed, none excepted.
We are all as well as usual; that is to say, as well as reasonable folks expect to be on the crazy side of this frail existence.
I rejoice that we shall so soon have you again at our fireside.
W. C.
TO MRS. KING.[580]
Weston, March 2, 1791.
My dear Friend,—I am sick and ashamed of myself that I forgot my promise; but it is actually true that I did forget it. You, however, I did not forget; nor did I forget to wonder and to be alarmed at your silence, being perfectly unconscious of my arrears. All this, together with various other trespasses of mine, must be set down to the account of Homer; and, wherever he is, he is bound to make his apology to all my correspondents, but to you in particular. True it is, that if Mrs. Unwin did not call me from that pursuit, I should forget, in the ardour with which I persevere in it, both to eat, and to drink, and to retire to rest. This zeal has increased in me regularly as I have proceeded, and in an exact ratio, as a mathematician would say, to the progress I have made toward the point at which I have been aiming. You will believe this, when I tell you, that, not contented with my previous labours, I have actually revised the whole work, and have made a thousand alterations in it, since it has been in the press. I have now, however, tolerably well satisfied myself at least, and trust that the printer and I shall trundle along merrily to the conclusion. I expect to correct the proof-sheets of the third book of the Odyssey to-day.
Thus it is, as I believe I have said to you before, that you are doomed to hear of nothing but Homer from me. There is less of gallantry than of nature in this proceeding. When I write to you, I think of nothing but the subject that is uppermost, and that uppermost is always Homer. Then I consider that though, as a lady, you have a right to expect other treatment at my hands, you are a lady who has a husband, and that husband an old schoolfellow of mine, and who, I know, interests himself in my success.
I am likely, after all, to gather a better harvest of subscribers at Cambridge than I expected. A little cousin of mine, an undergraduate of Caius College, suggested to me, when he was here in the summer, that it might not be amiss to advertise the work at Merril's the bookseller. I acquiesced in the measure, and at his return he pasted me on a board, and hung me up in the shop, as it has proved in the event, much to my emolument. For many, as I understand, have subscribed in consequence; and, among the rest, several of the College libraries.
I am glad that you have seen the last Northampton dirge, for the rogue of a clerk sent me only half the number of printed copies for which I stipulated with him at first, and they were all expended immediately. The poor man himself is dead now; and whether his successor will continue me in my office, or seek another laureat, has not yet transpired.
I am, dear madam,
Affectionately yours,
W. C.