TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT.
Weston, Jan. 4, 1791.
My dear Friend,—You would long since have received an answer to your last, had not the wicked clerk of Northampton delayed to send me the printed copy of my annual dirge, which I waited to enclose. Here it is at last, and much good may it do the readers![576]
I have regretted that I could not write sooner, especially because it well became me to reply as soon as possible to your kind inquiries after my health, which has been both better and worse since I wrote last. The cough was cured, or nearly so, when I received your letter, but I have lately been afflicted with a nervous fever, a malady formidable to me above all others, on account of the terror and dejection of spirits that in my case always accompany it. I even look forward, for this reason, to the month now current, with the most miserable apprehensions; for in this month the distemper has twice seized me. I wish to be thankful, however, to the sovereign Dispenser both of health and sickness, that, though I have felt cause enough to tremble, he gives me now encouragement to hope that I may dismiss my fears, and expect, for this January at least, to escape it.
The mention of quantity reminds me of a remark that I have seen somewhere, possibly in Johnson, to this purport, that, the syllables in our language being neither long nor short, our verse accordingly is less beautiful than the verse of the Greeks or Romans, because requiring less artifice in its construction. But I deny the fact, and am ready to depose on oath, that I find every syllable as distinguishably and clearly, either long or short, in our language, as in any other. I know also, that without an attention to the quantity of our syllables, good verse cannot possibly be written, and that ignorance of this matter is one reason why we see so much that is good for nothing. The movement of a verse is always either shuffling or graceful, according to our management in this particular, and Milton gives almost as many proofs of it in his Paradise Lost as there are lines in the poem. Away, therefore, with all such unfounded observations! I would not give a farthing for many bushels of them—nor you perhaps for this letter. Yet, upon recollection, forasmuch as I know you to be a dear lover of literary gossip, I think it possible you may esteem it highly.
Believe me, my dear friend, most truly yours,
W. C.
The following letter records the death of Mrs. Newton, the object of so early and lasting an attachment on the part of the Rev. John Newton.
TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.[577]
Weston, Jan. 20, 1791.
My dear Friend,—Had you been a man of this world, I should have held myself bound by the law of ceremonies to have sent you long since my tribute of condolence. I have sincerely mourned with you; and though you have lost a wife, and I only a friend, yet do I understand too well the value of such a friend as Mrs. Newton not to have sympathised with you very nearly. But you are not a man of this world; neither can you, who have both the Scripture and the Giver of Scripture to console you, have any need of aid from others, or expect it from such spiritual imbecility as mine. I considered, likewise, that receiving a letter from Mrs. Unwin, you, in fact, received one from myself, with this difference only,—that hers could not fail to be better adapted to the occasion and to your own frame of mind than any that I could send you.
[Torn off.]