My dear Johnny,—Here am I, with I know not how many letters to answer, and no time to do it in. I exhort you, therefore, to set a proper value on this, as proving your priority in my attentions, though in other respects likely to be of little value.
You do well to sit for your picture, and give very sufficient reasons for doing it; you will also, I doubt not, take care that, when future generations shall look at it, some spectator or other shall say, this is the picture of a good man and a useful one.
And now God bless you, my dear Johnny. I proceed much after the old rate; rising cheerless and distressed in the morning, and brightening a little as the day goes on.
Adieu,
W. C.
TO WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ.
Weston, Oct. 28, 1792.
Nothing done, my dearest brother, nor likely to be done at present; yet I purpose in a day or two to make another attempt, to which, however, I shall address myself with fear and trembling, like a man who, having sprained his wrist, dreads to use it. I have not, indeed, like such a man, injured myself by any extraordinary exertion, but seem as much enfeebled as if I had. The consciousness that there is so much to do, and nothing done, is a burden I am not able to bear. Milton especially is my grievance, and I might almost as well be haunted by his ghost as goaded with continual reproaches for neglecting him. I will therefore begin; I will do my best; and if, after all, that best prove good for nothing, I will even send the notes, worthless as they are, that I have made already; a measure very disagreeable to myself, and to which nothing but necessity shall compel me. I shall rejoice to see those new samples of your biography,[675] which you give me to expect.
Allons! Courage!—Here comes something however; produced after a gestation as long as that of a pregnant woman. It is the debt long unpaid, the compliment due to Romney; and if it has your approbation, I will send it, or you may send it for me. I must premise, however, that I intended nothing less than a sonnet when I began. I know not why, but I said to myself, it shall not be a sonnet; accordingly I attempted it in one sort of measure, then in a second, then in a third, till I had made the trial in half a dozen different kinds of shorter verse, and behold it is a sonnet at last. The fates would have it so.
TO GEORGE ROMNEY, ESQ.
Romney! expert infallibly to trace,
On chart or canvas, not the form alone,
And semblance, but, however faintly shown,
The mind's impression too on every face,
With strokes, that time ought never to erase:
Thou hast so pencill'd mine, that though I own
The subject worthless, I have never known
The artist shining with superior grace.