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,