TO LADY HESKETH.
Weston, Aug. 11, 1793.
My dearest Cousin,—I am glad that my poor and hasty attempts to express some little civility to Miss Fanshaw and the amiable Count,[715] have your and her approbation. The lines addressed to her were not what I would have made them, but lack of time, a lack which always presses me, would not suffer me to improve them. Many thanks for her letter, which, were my merits less the subject of it, I should without scruple say is an excellent one. She writes with the force and accuracy of a person skilled in more languages than are spoken in the present day, as I doubt not that she is. I perfectly approve the theme she recommends to me, but am at present so totally absorbed in Homer, that all I do beside is ill done, being hurried over; and I would not execute ill a subject of her recommending.
I shall watch the walnuts with more attention than they who eat them, which I do in some hope, though you do not expressly say so, that when their threshing time arrives, we shall see you here. I am now going to paper my new study, and in a short time it will be fit to inhabit.
Lady Spencer has sent me a present from Rome, by the hands of Sir John Throckmorton, engravings of Odyssey subjects, after figures by Flaxman,[716] a statuary at present resident there, of high repute, and much a friend of Hayley's.
Thou livest, my dear, I acknowledge, in a very fine country, but they have spoiled it by building London in it.
Adieu,
W. C.
That the allusion in the former part of the letter may be understood, it is necessary to state, that Lady Hesketh had lent a manuscript poem of Cowper's to her friend Miss Fanshaw, with an injunction that she should neither show it nor take a copy. This promise was violated, and the reason assigned is expressed by the young lady in the following verses.
What wonder! if my wavering hand
Had dared to disobey,
When Hesketh gave a harsh command,
And Cowper led astray?
Then take this tempting gift of thine,
By pen uncopied yet;
But, canst thou memory confine,
Or teach me to forget?
More lasting than the touch of art
The characters remain,
When written by a feeling heart
On tablets of the brain.