Weston, Nov. 16, 1791.
My dear Friend,—I am weary of making you wait for an answer, and therefore resolve to send you one, though without the lines you ask for. Such as they are, they have been long ready; and could I have found a conveyance for them, should have been with you weeks ago. Mr. Bean's last journey to town might have afforded me an opportunity to send them, but he gave me not sufficient notice. They must, therefore, be still delayed till either he shall go to London again or somebody else shall offer. I thank you for yours, which are as much better than mine as gold is better than feathers.
It seemed necessary that I should account for my apparent tardiness to comply with the obliging request of a lady, and of a lady who employed you as her intermedium. None was wanted, as you well assured her. But had there been occasion for one, she could not possibly have found a better.
I was much pleased with your account of your visit to Cowslip Green,[617] both for the sake of what you saw there, and because I am sure you must have been as happy in such company as any situation in this world can make you. Miss More has been always employed, since I first heard of her doings, as becomes a Christian. So she was while endeavouring to reform the unreformable great; and so she is, while framing means and opportunities to instruct the more tractable little. Horace's Virginibus, puerisque, may be her motto, but in a sense much nobler than he has annexed to it. I cannot, however, be entirely reconciled to the thought of her being henceforth silent, though even for the sake of her present labours.[618] A pen useful as hers ought not, perhaps, to be laid aside; neither, perhaps, will she altogether renounce it, but, when she has established her schools, and habituated them to the discipline she intends, will find it desirable to resume it. I rejoice that she has a sister like herself, capable of bidding defiance to fatigue and hardship, to dirty roads and wet raiment, in so excellent a cause.[619]
I beg that when you write next to either of those ladies, you will present my best compliments to Miss Martha, and tell her that I can never feel myself flattered more than I was by her application. God knows how unworthy I judge myself, at the same time, to be admitted into a collection[620] of which you are a member. Were there not a crowned head or two to keep me in countenance, I should even blush to think of it.
I would that I could see some of the mountains which you have seen; especially, because Dr. Johnson has pronounced that no man is qualified to be a poet who has never seen a mountain. But mountains I shall never see, unless perhaps in a dream, or unless there are such in heaven. Nor those, unless I receive twice as much mercy as ever yet was shown to any man.
I am now deep in Milton, translating his Latin poems for a pompous edition, of which you have undoubtedly heard. This amuses me for the present, and will for a year or two. So long, I presume, I shall be occupied in the several functions that belong to my present engagement.
Mrs. Unwin and I are about as well as usual; always mindful of you, and always affectionately so. Our united love attends yourself and Miss Catlett.
Believe me, most truly yours,
W. C.