TO THE REV. MR. HURDIS.
Weston, June 13, 1791.
My dear Sir,—I ought to have thanked you for your agreeable and entertaining letter much sooner, but I have many correspondents who will not be said nay; and have been obliged of late to give my last attentions to Homer. The very last indeed, for yesterday I despatched to town, after revising them carefully, the proof sheets of subscribers' names, among which I took special notice of yours, and am much obliged to you for it. We have contrived, or rather my bookseller and printer have contrived (for they have never waited a moment for me) to publish as critically at the wrong time, as if my whole interest and success had depended upon it. March, April, and May, said Johnson to me in a letter that I received from him in February, are the best months for publication. Therefore now it is determined that Homer shall come out on the first of July; that is to say, exactly at the moment when, except a few lawyers, not a creature will be left in town who will ever care one farthing about him. To which of these two friends of mine I am indebted for this management, I know not. It does not please, but I would be a philosopher as well as a poet, and therefore make no complaint, or grumble at all about it. You, I presume, have had dealings with them both—how did they manage for you? And, if as they have for me, how did you behave under it? Some who love me complain that I am too passive; and I should be glad of an opportunity to justify myself by your example. The fact is, should I thunder ever so loud, no efforts of that sort will avail me now; therefore, like a good economist of my bolts, I choose to reserve them for more profitable occasions.
I am glad to find that your amusements have been so similar to mine; for in this instance too I seemed in need of somebody to keep me in countenance, especially in my attention and attachment to animals. All the notice that we lords of the creation vouchsafe to bestow on the creatures is generally to abuse them; it is well, therefore, that here and there a man should be found a little womanish, or perhaps a little childish, in this matter, who will make some amends, by kissing and coaxing and laying them in one's bosom. You remember the little ewe lamb, mentioned by the prophet Nathan; the prophet perhaps invented the tale for the sake of its application to David's conscience; but it is more probable that God inspired him with it for that purpose. If he did, it amounts to a proof, that he does not overlook, but, on the contrary, much notices such little partialities and kindnesses to his dumb creatures, as we, because we articulate, are pleased to call them.
Your sisters are fitter to judge than I, whether assembly-rooms are the places, of all others, in which the ladies may be studied to most advantage. I am an old fellow, but I had once my dancing days, as you have now, yet I could never find that I learned half so much of a woman's real character by dancing with her as by conversing with her at home, where I could observe her behaviour at the table, at the fire-side, and in all the trying circumstances of domestic life. We are all good when we are pleased, but she is the good woman who wants not a fiddle to sweeten her. If I am wrong, the young ladies will set me right; in the meantime I will not tease you with graver arguments on the subject, especially as I have a hope, that years, and the study of the Scripture, and His Spirit whose word it is, will, in due time, bring you to my way of thinking. I am not one of those sages who require that young men should be as old as themselves before they have time to be so.
With my love to your fair sisters, I remain,
Dear Sir, most truly yours,
W. C.