The mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.
Alas! for Pope, if the mercy he showed to others, was the measure of mercy he received! He was the less pardonable too, because experienced in all the difficulties of composition.
I scratch this between dinner and tea: a time when I cannot write much without disordering my noddle and bringing a flush into my face. You will excuse me therefore, if, through respect for the two important considerations of health and beauty, I conclude myself.
Ever yours,
W. C.
TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.[493]
August 12, 1789.
My dear Friend,—I rejoice that you and Mrs. Hill are so agreeably occupied in your retreat.[494] August, I hope, will make us amends for the gloom of its many wintry predecessors. We are now gathering from our meadows, not hay, but muck; such stuff as deserves not the carriage, which yet it must have, that the after-crop may have leave to grow. The Ouse has hardly deigned to run in his channel since the summer began.
My Muse were a vixen if she were not always ready to fly in obedience to your commands. But what can be done? I can write nothing in the few hours that remain to me of this day that will be fit for your purpose, and unless I could despatch what I write by to-morrow's post, it would not reach you in time. I must add, too, that my friend, the vicar of the next parish,[495] engaged me, the day before yesterday, to furnish him by next Sunday with a hymn, to be sung on the occasion of his preaching to the children of the Sunday-school:[496] of which hymn I have not yet produced a syllable. I am somewhat in the case of lawyer Dowling, in "Tom Jones;" and, could I split myself into as many poets as there are muses, could find employment for them all.
Adieu, my dear friend.
I am ever yours,
W. C.