TO LADY HESKETH.
The Lodge, Jan. 1, 1788.
Now for another story almost incredible! A story that would be quite such, if it was not certain that you give me credit for any thing. I have read the poem for the sake of which you sent the paper, and was much entertained by it. You think it perhaps, as very well you may, the only piece of that kind that was ever produced. It is indeed original, for I dare say Mr. Merry[387] never saw mine; but certainly it is not unique. For most true it is, my dear, that ten years since, having a letter to write to a friend of mine to whom I could write any thing, I filled a whole sheet with a composition, both in measure and in manner, precisely similar. I have in vain searched for it. It is either burnt or lost. Could I have found it, you would have had double postage to pay. For that one man in Italy and another in England, who never saw each other, should stumble on a species of verse, in which no other man ever wrote (and I believe that to be the case) and upon a style and manner too of which, I suppose, that neither of them had ever seen an example, appears to me so extraordinary a fact that I must have sent you mine, whatever it had cost you, and am really vexed that I cannot authenticate the story by producing a voucher. The measure I recollect to have been perfectly the same, and as to the manner I am equally sure of that, and from this circumstance, that Mrs. Unwin and I never laughed more at any production of mine, perhaps not even at John Gilpin. But for all this, my dear, you must, as I said, give me credit, for the thing itself is gone to that limbo of vanity where alone, says Milton, things lost on earth are to be met with. Said limbo is, as you know, in the moon, whither I could not at present convey myself without a good deal of difficulty and inconvenience.
This morning, being the morning of new year's day, I sent to the Hall a copy of verses, addressed to Mrs. Throckmorton, entitled, "The Wish, or the Poet's New Year's Gift." We dine there to-morrow, when I suppose I shall hear news of them.[388] Their kindness is so great, and they seize with such eagerness every opportunity of doing all they think will please us, that I held myself almost in duty bound to treat them with this stroke of my profession.
The small-pox has done, I believe, all that it has to do at Weston. Old folks, and even women with child, have been inoculated. We talk of our freedom, and some of us are free enough, but not the poor. Dependent as they are upon parish bounty, they are sometimes obliged to submit to impositions which, perhaps in France itself, could hardly be paralleled. Can man or woman be said to be free, who is commanded to take a distemper sometimes, at least, mortal, and in circumstances most likely to make it so? No circumstance whatever was permitted to exempt the inhabitants of Weston. The old as well as the young, and the pregnant as well as they who had only themselves within them, have been inoculated. Were I asked who is the most arbitrary sovereign on earth, I should answer, neither the king of France, nor the grand signior, but an overseer of the poor in England.[389]
I am as heretofore occupied with Homer: my present occupation is the revisal of all I have done, viz., the first fifteen books. I stand amazed at my own exceeding dexterity in the business, being verily persuaded that, as far as I have gone, I have improved the work to double its value.
That you may begin the new year and end it in all health and happiness, and many more when the present shall have been long an old one, is the ardent wish of Mrs. Unwin and of yours, my dearest coz. most cordially,
W. C.