member of that society only, not as an inhabitant. I live here almost at the distance of sixty miles from London, which I have not visited these eight and twenty years, and probably never shall again. Thus it fell out, that Mr. Morewood had sailed again for America before your parcel reached me, nor should I (it is likely) have received it at all, had not a Cousin of mine, who lives in the Temple, by good fortune received it first, and opened your Letter; finding for whom it was intended, he transmitted to me both that and the parcel. Your testimony of approbation of what I have published, coming from another quarter of the globe, could not but be extremely flattering, as was your obliging notice that the Task had been reprinted in your city. Both volumes, I hope have a tendency to discountenance vice, and promote the best interests of mankind, But how far they shall be effectual to these invaluable purposes, depends altogether on his blessing, whose truths I have endeavoured to inculcate. In the mean time I have sufficient proof, that readers may be pleased, may approve, and yet lay down the book unedified.

During the last five years I have been occupied with a work of a very different nature, a Translation of the Iliad and Odyssey into blank verse, and the

work is now ready for publication. I undertook it, partly because Pope's is too lax a version, which has lately occasioned the learned of this country to call aloud for a new one, and partly because I could fall on no better expedient to amuse a mind too much addicted to melancholy.

I send you in return for the volumes with which you favored me, three on religious subjects, popular productions that have not been long published, and that may not therefore yet have reached your country: The Christian Officer's Panoply, by a marine officer-The Importance of the Manners of the Great, and an Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World. The two last are said to be written by a lady, Miss Hannah More, and are universally read by people of that rank to which she addresses them. Your manners, I suppose, may be more pure than ours, yet it is not unlikely, that even among you may be found some to whom her strictures are applicable. I return you my thanks, Sir, for the volumes you sent me, two of which I have read with pleasure, Mr. Edwards's book, and the Conquest of Canaan. The rest I have not had time to read, except Doctor Dwight's Sermon, which pleased me almost more than any that I have either seen or heard.

I shall account a correspondence with you an

honour, and remain, dear Sir,

Your obliged and obedient servant,

W. C.

The occurrences related in the series of Letters, that I have just imparted to my reader, have now brought me to the close of the second period in my Work. As I contemplated the life of my friend, it seemed to display itself in three obvious divisions: the first ending with the remarkable æra when he burst forth on the world as a poet, in his fiftieth year; on which occasion we may apply to him the lively compliment of Waller to Denham, and say, with superior truth" He burst out like the Irish rebellion, "three-score thousand strong, when nobody was aware, or in the least suspected it " The second division may conclude with the publication of his Homer; comprising the incidents of ten splendid and fruitful years, that may ridian of his poetical career.

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extends to that awful event,

be regarded as the meThe subsequent period which terminates every

labour of the poet and the man.

We have seen in many of the preceding Letters, with what ardour of application and liveliness of hope, he devoted himself to his favourite project of enriching the literature of his country with an English Homer, that might be justly esteemed as a faithful, yet free translation; a genuine and graceful representative of the justly idolized original.

After five years of intense and affectionate labour, in which nothing could withhold him from his -interesting work, except that oppressive and cruel malady, which suspended his powers of application for several months, he published his complete version in two quarto volumes, on the first of July 1791, having inscribed the Iliad to his young noble kinsman, Earl Cowper; and the Odyssey to the dowager Countess Spencer; a lady, for whose virtues he had long entertained a most cordial and affectionate veneration.

The accomplished translator had exerted no common powers of genius and of industry to satisfy both himself and the world; yet in his first edition of this long laboured work, he afforded complete satisfaction to neither, and I believe for this reason Homer is so exquisitely beautiful in his own language, and he has been so long an idol in every literary mind,

that any copy of him, which the best of modern poets can execute, must probably resemble in its effect the portrait of a graceful woman, painted by an excellent artist for her lover:-The lover indeed, will acknowledge great merit in the work, and think himself much indebted to the skill of such an artist, but he will never acknowledge, as in truth he never can feel, that the best of resemblances exhibits all the grace that he discerns in the beloved original.

So fares it with the admirers of Homer; his very translators themselves feel so perfectly the power of this predominant affection, that they gradually grow discontented with their own labour, however. approved in the moment of its supposed completion. This was so remarkably the case with Cowper, that in process of time we shall see him employed upon what may almost be called his second translation; so great were the alterations he made in a deliberate revisal of his work for a second edition. And in the Preface which he prepared for that edition, he has spoken of his own labour with the most frank and ingenuous veracity. Yet of the first edition it may, I think, be fairly said, that it accomplished more than any of his poetical predecessors had achieved before him. It made the nearest approach to that sweet majestic sim