TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.
Olney, Nov. 27, 1784.
My dear Friend,—All the interest that you take in my new publication, and all the pleas that you urge in behalf of your right to my confidence, the moment I had read your letter, struck me as so many proofs of 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 a certain truth that, whatever seeming defects in point of attention and attachment to you my conduct on this occasion may have appeared to have been chargeable with, I am in reality as clear of all real ones as you would wish to find me.
I send you enclosed, in the first place, a copy of the advertisement to the reader, which accounts for my title, not otherwise easily accounted for: secondly, what is called an argument, or a summary of the contents of each book, more circumstantial and diffuse by far than that which I have sent to the press. It will give you a pretty accurate acquaintance with my matter, though the tenons and mortices, by which the several passages are connected and let into each other, cannot be explained in a syllabus: and lastly, an extract, as you desired. The subject of it I am sure will please you; and, as I have admitted into my description no images but what are scriptural, and have aimed as exactly as I could at the plain and simple sublimity of the scripture language, I have hopes 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 the 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 predilection in favour of a metropolis that beggars and exhausts the country, by evacuating it of all its principal inhabitants; and collaterally, and, as far as is consistent with this double intention, to have a stroke at vice, vanity, and folly, wherever I find them. I have not spared the Universities. A letter, which appeared in the "General Evening Post" of Saturday, said to have been received by a 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 censures of those bodies, if any such justification were wanted. By way of supplement to what I have written on this subject, I have added a poem, called "Tirocinium," which is in rhyme. It treats of the scandalous relaxation of discipline that obtains in almost all schools universally, but especially in the largest, which are so negligent in the article of morals that boys are debauched in general the moment they are capable of being so. It recommends the office of tutor to the father where there is no real impediment, the expedient of a domestic tutor where there is, and the disposal of boys into the hands of a respectable country clergyman, who limits his attention to two, in all cases where they cannot be conveniently educated at home. Mr. Unwin happily affording me an instance in point, the poem is inscribed to him. You will now I hope command your hunger to be patient, and be satisfied with the luncheon that I send, till dinner comes. That piecemeal perusal of the work, sheet by sheet, would be so disadvantageous to the work itself, and therefore so uncomfortable to me, that (I dare say) you will waive your desire of it. A poem thus disjointed cannot possibly be fit for any body's inspection but the author's.
Tully's rule—Nulla dies sine lineâ—will make a volume in less time than one would suppose. I adhered to it so rigidly that, though more than once I found three lines as many as I had time to compass, still I wrote; and, finding occasionally, and as it might happen, a more fluent vein, the abundance of one day made me amends for the barrenness of another. But I do not mean to write blank verse again. Not having the music of rhyme, it secures so close an attention to the pause and the cadence, and such a peculiar mode of expression, as 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.