Meantime his steeds
Snorted, by Myrmidons detain'd, and loosed
From their own master's chariot, foam'd to fly.
You will easily guess to what they belong; and I mention the circumstance merely in proof of my perpetual engagement to Homer, whether at home or abroad; for, when I committed these lines to the back of your letter, I was rambling at a considerable distance from home. I set one foot on a mole-hill, placed my hat, with the crown upward, on my knee, laid your letter upon it, and with a pencil wrote the fragment that I have sent you. In the same posture I have written many and many a passage of a work which I hope soon to have done with. But all this is foreign to what I intended when I first took pen in hand. My purpose then was, to excuse my long silence as well as I could, by telling you that I am, at present, not only a labourer in verse, but in prose also, having been requested by a friend, to whom I could not refuse it, to translate for him a series of Latin letters, received from a Dutch minister of the gospel at the Cape of Good Hope.[542] With this additional occupation you will be sensible that my hands are full; and it is a truth that, except to yourself, I would, just at this time, have written to nobody.
I felt a true concern for what you told me in your last, respecting the ill state of health of your much-valued friend, Mr. Martyn. You say, if I knew half his worth, I should, with you, wish his longer continuance below. Now you must understand, that, ignorant as I am of Mr. Martyn, except by your report of him, I do nevertheless sincerely wish it—and that, both for your sake and my own; nor less for the sake of the public.[543] For your sake, because you love and esteem him highly; for the sake of the public, because, should it please God to take him before he has completed his great botanical work, I suppose no other person will be able to finish it so well; and for my own sake, because I know he has a kind and favourable opinion beforehand of my translation, and, consequently, should it justify his prejudice when it appears, he will stand my friend against an army of Cambridge critics.—It would have been strange indeed if self had not peeped out on this subject.—I beg you will present my best respects to him, and assure him that, were it possible he could visit Weston, I should be most happy to receive him.
Mrs. Unwin would have been employed in transcribing my rhymes for you, would her health have permitted; but it is very seldom that she can write without being much a sufferer by it. She has almost a constant pain in her side, which forbids it. As soon as it leaves her, or much abates, she will be glad to work for you.
I am, like you and Mr. King, an admirer of clouds, but only when there are blue intervals, and pretty wide ones too, between them. One cloud is too much for me, but a hundred are not too many. So, with this riddle and with my best respects to Mr. King, to which I add Mrs. Unwin's to you both,—I remain, my dear madam,
Truly yours,
W. C.
TO LADY HESKETH.
The Lodge, June 17, 1790.
My dear Coz,—Here am I, at eight in the morning, in full dress, going a-visiting to Chicheley. We are a strong party, and fill two chaises; Mrs. F. the elder, and Mrs. G. in one; Mrs. F. the younger, and myself in another. Were it not that I shall find Chesters at the end of my journey, I should be inconsolable. That expectation alone supports my spirits: and, even with this prospect before me, when I saw this moment a poor old woman coming up the lane, opposite my window, I could not help sighing, and saying to myself, "Poor, but happy old woman! Thou art exempted by thy situation in life from riding in chaises, and making thyself fine in a morning: happier therefore in my account than I, who am under the cruel necessity of doing both. Neither dost thou write verses, neither hast thou ever heard of the name of Homer, whom I am miserable to abandon for a whole morning!" This, and more of the same sort, passed in my mind on seeing the old woman abovesaid.
The troublesome business with which I filled my last letter is, I hope, by this time concluded, and Mr. Archdeacon satisfied. I can, to be sure, but ill afford to pay fifty pounds for another man's negligence, but would be happy to pay a hundred rather than be treated as if I were insolvent; threatened with attorneys and bums. One would think that, living where I live, I might be exempted from trouble. But alas! as the philosophers often affirm, there is no nook under heaven in which trouble cannot enter; and perhaps, had there never been one philosopher in the world, this is a truth that would not have been always altogether a secret.