Mr. Bean has told me that he saw you at Bedford, and gave us your reasons for not coming our way. It is well, so far as your own comfortable lodging and our gratification were concerned, that you did not; for our house is brimful, as it has been all the summer, with my relations from Norfolk. We should all have been mortified, both you and we, had you been obliged, as you must have been, to seek a residence elsewhere.
I am sorry that Mr. Venn's[602] labours below are so near to a conclusion. I have seen few men whom I could have loved more, had opportunity been given me to know him better. So, at least, I have thought as often as I have seen him. But when I saw him last, which is some years since, he appeared then so much broken that I could not have imagined that he would last so long. Were I capable of envying, in the strict sense of the word, a good man, I should envy him, and Mr. Berridge,[603] and yourself, who have spent, and while they last, will continue to spend, your lives in the service of the only Master worth serving; labouring always for the souls of men, and not to tickle their ears, as I do. But this I can say—God knows how much rather I would be the obscure tenant of a lath-and-plaster cottage, with a lively sense of my interest in a Redeemer, than the most admired object of public notice without it. Alas! what is a whole poem, even one of Homer's, compared with a single aspiration that finds its way immediately to God, though clothed in ordinary language, or perhaps not articulated at all! These are my sentiments as much as ever they were, though my days are all running to waste among Greeks and Trojans. The night cometh when no man can work; and, if I am ordained to work to better purpose, that desirable period cannot be very distant. My day is beginning to shut in, as every man's must who is on the verge of sixty.
All the leisure that I have had of late for thinking, has been given to the riots at Birmingham. What a horrid zeal for the church, and what a horrid loyalty to government, have manifested themselves there! How little do they dream that they could not have dishonoured their idol, the Establishment, more, and that the great Bishop of souls himself with abhorrence rejects their service! But I have not time to enlarge; breakfast calls me; and all my post-breakfast time must be given to poetry. Adieu!
Most truly yours,
W. C.
TO THE REV. WALTER BAGOT.
Weston, August 2, 1791.
My dear Friend,—I was much obliged, and still feel myself much obliged, to Lady Bagot for the visit with which she favoured me. Had it been possible that I could have seen Lord Bagot too, I should have been completely happy. For, as it happened, I was that morning in better spirits than usual, and, though I arrived late, and after a long walk, and extremely hot, which is a circumstance very apt to disconcert me, yet I was not disconcerted half so much as I generally am at the sight of a stranger, especially of a stranger lady, and more especially at the sight of a stranger lady of quality. When the servant told me that Lady Bagot was in the parlour, I felt my spirits sink ten degrees; but, the moment I saw her, at least, when I had been a minute in her company, I felt them rise again, and they soon rose even above their former pitch. I know two ladies of fashion now whose manners have this effect upon me, the lady in question and the Lady Spencer. I am a shy animal, and want much kindness to make me easy. Such I shall be to my dying day.
Here sit I, calling myself shy, yet have just published by the bye, two great volumes of poetry.
This reminds me of Ranger's observation in the "Suspicious Husband," who says to somebody, I forget whom, "There is a degree of assurance in you modest men that we impudent fellows can never arrive at."—Assurance, indeed! Have you seen 'em? What do you think they are? Nothing less, I can tell you, than a translation of Homer, of the sublimest poet in the world. That's all. Can I ever have the impudence to call myself shy again?
You live, I think, in the neighbourhood of Birmingham. What must you not have felt on the late alarming occasion! You, I suppose, could see the fires from your windows. We, who only heard the news of them, have trembled. Never sure was religious zeal more terribly manifested or more to the prejudice of its own cause.[604]