TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT.
Weston, Jan. 29, 1789.
My dear Friend,—I shall be a better, at least a more frequent, correspondent when I have done with Homer. I am not forgetful of any letters that I owe, and least of all forgetful of my debts in that way to you; on the contrary, I live in a continual state of self-reproach for not writing more punctually; but the old Grecian, whom I charge myself never to neglect, lest I should never finish him, has, at present, a voice that seems to drown all other demands, and many to which I could listen with more pleasure than even to his Os rotundum. I am now in the eleventh book of the Odyssey, conversing with the dead. Invoke the muse in my behalf, that I may roll the stone of Sisyphus with some success. To do it as Homer has done it is, I suppose, in our verse and language, impossible; but I will hope not to labour altogether to as little purpose as Sisyphus himself did.
Though I meddle little with politics, and can find but little leisure to do so, the present state of things unavoidably engages a share of my attention. But, as they say, Archimedes, when Syracuse was taken, was found busied in the solution of a problem, so, come what may, I shall be found translating Homer,
Sincerely yours,
W. C.
TO MRS KING.[475]
The Lodge, Jan. 29, 1789.
My dear Madam,—This morning I said to Mrs. Unwin, "I must write to Mrs. King: her long silence alarms me—something has happened." These words of mine proved only a prelude to the arrival of your messenger with his most welcome charge, for which I return you my sincerest thanks. You have sent me the very things I wanted, and which I should have continued to want, had not you sent them. As often as the wine is set on the table, I have said to myself, "This is all very well; but I have no bottle-stands;" and myself as often replied, "No matter; you can make shift without them." Thus I and myself have conferred together many a day; and you, as if you had been privy to the conference, have kindly supplied the deficiency, and put an end to the debate for ever.
When your messenger arrived, I was beginning to dress for dinner, being engaged to dine with my neighbour, Mr. Throckmorton, from whose house I am just returned, and snatch a few moments before supper to tell you how much I am obliged to you. You will not, therefore, find me very prolix at present; but it shall not be long before you shall hear further from me. Your honest old neighbour sleeps under our roof, and will be gone in the morning before I shall have seen him.
I have more items than one by which to remember the late frost: it has cost me the bitterest uneasiness. Mrs. Unwin got a fall on the gravel-walk covered with ice, which has confined her to an upper chamber ever since. She neither broke nor dislocated any bones; but received such a contusion below the hip, as crippled her completely. She now begins to recover, after having been helpless as a child for a whole fortnight, but so slowly at present, that her amendment is even now almost imperceptible.
Engaged, however, as I am with my own private anxieties, I yet find leisure to interest myself not a little in the distresses of the royal family, especially in those of the Queen.[476] The Lord-Chancellor called the other morning on Lord Stafford: entering the room, he threw his hat into a sofa at the fireside, and, clasping his hands, said, "I have heard of distress, and I have read of it; but I never saw distress equal to that of the Queen." This I know from particular and certain authority.
My dear madam, I have not time to enlarge at present on this subject, or to touch any other. Once more, therefore, thanking you for your kindness, of which I am truly sensible; and thanking, too, Mr. King for the favour he has done me in subscribing to my Homer, and at the same time begging you to make my best compliments to him, I conclude myself, with Mrs. Unwin's acknowledgments of your most acceptable present to her,
Your obliged and affectionate
W. C.
TO MRS. KING.[477]
March 12, 1789.
My dear Madam,—I feel myself in no small degree unworthy of the kind solicitude which you express concerning me and my welfare, after a silence so much longer than I gave you reason to expect. I should indeed account myself inexcusable, had I not to allege, in my defence, perpetual engagements of such a kind as would by no means be dispensed with. Had Homer alone been in question, Homer should have made room for you: but I have had other work in hand at the same time, equally pressing and more laborious. Let it suffice to say, that I have not wilfully neglected you for a moment, and that you have never been out of my thoughts a day together. But I begin to perceive that, if a man will be an author, he must live neither to himself nor to his friends so much as to others, whom he never saw nor shall see.
My promise to follow my last letter with another speedily, which promise I kept so ill, is not the only only one which I am conscious of having made to you, and but very indifferently performed. I promised you all the smaller pieces that I should produce, as fast as occasion called them forth, and leisure occurred to write them. Now the fact is, that I have produced several since I made that fair profession, of which I have sent you hardly any. The reason is that, transcribed into the body of a letter, they would leave me no room for prose; and that other conveyance than by the post I cannot find, even after inquiry made among all my neighbours for a traveller to Kimbolton. Well, we shall see you, I hope, in the summer; and then I will show you all. I will transcribe one for you every morning before breakfast, as long as they last; and when you come down, you shall find it laid on your napkin. I sent one last week to London, which, by some kind body or another, I know not whom, is to be presented to the Queen. The subject, as you may guess, is the King's recovery; a theme that might make a bad poet a good one, and a good one excel himself. This, too, you shall see when we meet, unless it should bounce upon you before, from some periodical register of all such matters.
I shall commission my cousin, who lately left us, to procure for me the book you mention. Being, and having long been, so deep in the business of translation, it was natural that I should have many thoughts on that subject. I have accordingly had as many as would of themselves, perhaps, make a volume, and shall be glad to compare them with those of any other writer recommended by Mr. Martyn. When you write next to that gentleman, I beg you, madam, to present my compliments to him, with thanks both for the mention of Mr. Twining's[478] book, and for the honour of his name among my subscribers.
I remain always, my dear madam,
Your affectionate
W. C.
TO MRS KING.[479]
The Lodge, April 22, 1789.
My dear Madam,—Having waited hitherto in expectation of the messenger whom, in your last, you mentioned a design to send, I have at length sagaciously surmised that you delay to send him, in expectation of hearing first from me. I would that his errand hither were better worthy the journey. I shall have no very voluminous packet to charge him with when he comes. Such, however, as it is, it is ready; and has received an addition in the interim of one copy, which would not have made a part of it, had your Mercury arrived here sooner. It is on the subject of the Queen's visit to London on the night of the illuminations. Mrs. Unwin, knowing the burden that lies on my back too heavy for any but Atlantean shoulders, has kindly performed the copyist's part, and transcribed all that I had to send you. Observe, madam, I do not write this to hasten your messenger hither, but merely to account for my own silence. It is probable that the later he arrives, the more he will receive when he comes; for I never fail to write when I think I have found a favourable subject.[480]
We mourn that we must give up the hope of seeing you and Mr. King at Weston. Had our correspondence commenced sooner, we had certainly found the means of meeting; but it seems that we were doomed to know each other too late for a meeting in this world. May a better world make us amends, as it certainly will, if I ever reach a better! Our interviews here are but imperfect pleasures at the best; and generally from such as promise us most gratification we receive the most disappointment. But disappointment is, I suppose, confined to the planet on which we dwell, the only one in the universe, probably, that is inhabited by sinners.
I did not know, or even suspect, that when I received your last messenger, I received so eminent a disciple of Hippocrates; a physician of such absolute control over disease and the human constitution, as to be able to put a pestilence into his pocket, confine it there, and let it loose at his pleasure. We are much indebted to him that he did not give us here a stroke of his ability.
I must not forget to mention that I have received (probably not without your privity) Mr. Twining's valuable volume.[481] For a long time I supposed it to have come from my bookseller, who now and then sends me a new publication; but I find, on inquiry that it came not from him. I beg, madam, if you are aware that Mr. Twining himself sent it, or your friend Mr. Martyn, that you will negotiate for me on the occasion, and contrive to convey to the obliging donor my very warmest thanks. I am impatient till he receives them. I have not yet had time to do justice to a writer so sensible, elegant, and entertaining, by a complete perusal of his work; but I have with pleasure sought out all those passages to which Mr. Martyn was so good as to refer me, and am delighted to observe the exact agreement in opinion on the subject of translation in general, and on that of Mr. Pope's in particular, that subsists between Mr. Twining and myself.
With Mrs. Unwin's best compliments, I remain, my dear madam,
Your obliged and affectionate
W. C.
TO MRS. KING.[482]
April 30, 1789.
My dear Madam,—I thought to have sent you, by the return of your messenger, a letter; at least, something like one: but instead of sleeping here, as I supposed he would, he purposes to pass the night at Lavendon, a village three miles off. This design of his is but just made known to me, and it is now near seven in the evening. Therefore, lest he should be obliged to feel out his way, in an unknown country, in the dark, I am forced to scribble a hasty word or two, instead of devoting, as I intended, the whole evening to your service.
A thousand thanks for your basket, and all the good things that it contained; particularly for my brother's Poems,[483] whose hand-writing struck me the moment I saw it. They gave me some feelings of a melancholy kind, but not painful. I will return them to you by the next opportunity. I wish that mine, which I send you, may prove half as pleasant to you as your excellent cakes and apples have proved to us. You will then think yourselves sufficiently recompensed for your obliging present. If a crab-stock can transform a pippin into a nonpareil, what may not I effect in a translation of Homer? Alas! I fear, nothing half so valuable.
I have learned, at length, that I am indebted for Twining's Aristotle to a relation of mine, General Cowper.
Pardon me that I quit you so soon. It is not willingly; but I have compassion on your poor messenger.
Adieu, my dear madam, and believe me,
Affectionately yours,
W. C.