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, threescore 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 be regarded as the meridian of his poetical The subsequent period extends to that awful event, which terminates every labour of the poet and the man.

career.

We have seen in many of the preceding letters, with what ardour of application and liveliness of hope he devoted himself to his favorite 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 oppréssive 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 resemsemblances 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 simplicity, which forms one of the most attractive features in the great prince and father of poets.

Cowper, in reading Pope's Homer to Lady Austen and Mrs. Unwin, had frequently expressed a wish, and an expectation, of seeing the simplicity of the ancient bard more faithfully preserved in a new English version. Lady Austen, with a kind severity, reproved him for expecting from others what he, of all men living, was best qualified to accomplish himself; and her solicitations on the subject excited him to the arduous undertaking; though it seems not to have been actually begun till after her departure from Olney.

If he was not at first completely successful in this long and mighty work, the continual and voluntary application, with which he pursued it, was to himself a blessing of the utmost importance.

In those admirable admonitions to men of a poetical temperament, with which Dr. Currie has closed his instructive and pleasing Life of Burns, that accomplished physician has justly pointed to a regular and constant occupation as the true remedy for an inordinate sensibility, which may prove so perilous an enemy to the peace and happiness of a poet. His remark appears to be particularly verified in the striking, and I may say, medicinal influence, which a daily attachment of his thoughts to Homer produced, for a long time, on the tender spirits of my friend; an influence sufficiently proved by his frequent declarations, that he should be sorry to find himself at the end of his labour. The work was certainly beneficial to his health; it contributed a little to his fortune; and ultimately, I am persuaded, it will redound to his fame in a much higher degree, than it has hitherto done. Time will probably prove, that if it is not a perfect representation of Homer, it is at least such a copy of the matchless original, as no modern writer can surpass in the two essential articles of fidelity and freedom.