W. C.
The importance of improving the early hours of life, which, once lost, are never recovered, is profitably enforced in the succeeding letter.
TO SAMUEL ROSE, ESQ.
The Lodge, July 23, 1789.
You do well, my dear sir, to improve your opportunity; to speak in the rural phrase, this is your sowing time, and the sheaves you look for can never be yours unless you make that use of it. The colour of our whole life is generally such as the three or four first years in which we are our own masters make it. Then it is that we may be said to shape our own destiny, and to treasure up for ourselves a series of future successes or disappointments. Had I employed my time as wisely as you, in a situation very similar to yours, I had never been a poet perhaps; but I might by this time have acquired a character of more importance in society, and a situation in which my friends would have been better pleased to see me. But three years misspent in an attorney's office, were almost of course followed by several more equally misspent in the Temple, and the consequence has been, as the Italian epitaph says, "Sto qui." The only use I can make of myself now, at least the best, is to serve in terrorem to others, when occasion may happen to offer, that they may escape (so far as my admonitions can have any weight with them) my folly and my fate. When you feel yourself tempted to relax a little of the strictness of your present discipline, and to indulge in amusement incompatible with your future interests, think on your friend at Weston.
Having said this, I shall next, with my whole heart, invite you hither, and assure you that I look forward to approaching August with great pleasure, because it promises me your company. After a little time (which we shall wish longer) spent with us, you will return invigorated to your studies, and pursue them with more advantage. In the meantime, you have lost little, in point of season, by being confined to London. Incessant rains and meadows under water have given to the summer the air of winter, and the country has been deprived of half its beauties.
It is time to tell you that we are all well, and often make you our subject. This is the third meeting that my cousin and we have had in this country, and a great instance of good fortune I account it in such a world as this to have expected such a pleasure thrice, without being once disappointed. Add to this wonder as soon as you can by making yourself of the party.
W. C.