As I promised you verse, if you would send me a frank, I am not willing to return the cover without some, though, I think, I have already wearied you by the prolixity of my prose*. I must refer you to those unaccountable gaddings and caprices of the human mind, for the cause of this production; for in general, I believe, there is no man who has less to do with the ladies' cheeks than I have. I suppose it would be best to antedate it, and to imagine it was written twenty years ago, for my mind was never more in a trifling butterfly trim, than when I composed it, even in the earliest parts of my life. And what is worse than all this, I have translated it into Latin. But that some other time. Yours, W. C. * Here followed his poem, the Lily and the Rose. LETTER CCXXVI. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. MY DEAR WILLIAM, How apt we are to deceive ourselves when self is in question: you say I am in your debt, and I accounted you in mine; a mistake to which you must attribute my ar rears, if indeed I owe you any, for I am not backward to write where the uppermost thought is welcome. I am obliged to you for all the books you have occasionally furnished me with; I did not indeed read many of Johnson's Classics-those of established reputation are so fresh in my memory, though many years have intervened since I made them my companions, that it was like reading what I read yesterday over again; and as to the minor Classics, I did not think them worth reading at all-I tasted most of them, and did not like them-it is a great thing to be indeed a poet, and does not happen to more than one man in a century. Churchill, the name of poet great Churchill, deserved the I have read him twice, and some of his pieces three times over, and the last time with more pleasure than the first. The pitiful scribbler of his life seems to have undertaken that task, for which he was entirely unqualified, merely because it afforded him an opportunity to traduce him. He has inserted in it but one anecdote of consequence, for which he refers you to a novel, and introduces the story with doubts about the truth of it. But his barrenness as a biographer I could forgive, if the simpleton had not thought himself a judge of his writings, and under the erroneous influence of that thought, informs his reader that Gotham, Independence, and the Times, were catchpennies. Gotham, unless I am a greater blockhead than he, which I am far from believing, is a noble and beautiful poem, and a poem with which I make no doubt the author took as much pains, as with any he ever wrote. Making allowance (and Dryden perhaps in his Absalom and Achitophel stands in need of the same indulgence) for an unwarrantable use of Scripture, it appears to me to be a masterly performance. Independence is a most animated piece, full of strength and spirit, and marked with that bold masculine character, which I think is the great peculiarity of this writer. And the Times (except that the subject is disgusting to the last degree) stands equally high in my opinion. He is indeed a careless writer for the most part, but where shall we find in any of those authors, who finish their works with the exactness of a Flemish pencil, those bold and daring strokes of fancy, those numbers so hazardously ventured upon, and so happily finished, the matter so compressed, and yet so clear, and the colouring so sparingly laid on, and yet with such a beautiful effect? In short, it is not his least praise, that he is never guilty of those faults as a writer, which he lays to the charge of others. A proof that he did not judge by a borrowed standard, or from rules laid down by critics, but that he was qualified to do it by his own native powers, and his great superiority of genius. For he that wrote so much, and so fast, would through inadvertence and hurry unavoidably have departed from rules which he might have found in books, but his own truly poetical talent was a guide which could not suffer him to err. A race-horse is graceful in his swiftest pace, and never makes an awkward motion though he is pushed to his utmost speed. A cart-horse might perhaps be taught to play tricks in the riding-school, and might prance and curvet like his betters, but at some unlucky time would be sure to betray the baseness of his original. It is an affair of very little consequence perhaps to the well-being of mankind, but I cannot help regretting, that he died so soon.. Those words of Virgil, upon the immature death of Marcellus, might serve for his epitaph. "Ostendent terris hunc tantum fata, neque ultra "Esse sinent Yours, W. C. LETTER CCXXVII. TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. MY DEAR WILLIAM, I FIND the Register in all respects an entertaining medley, but especially in this, that it has brought to my view some long forgotten pieces of my own production. I mean by the way two or three. Those I have marked with my own initials, and you may be sure I found them peculiarly agreeable, as they had not only the grace of being mine, but that of novelty likewise to recommend them. It is at least twenty years since I saw them. think was never a dabbler in rhyme. been one ever since I was fourteen years of age, when I began with translating an elegy of Tibullus. I have no more right to the name of a poet, than a maker of mouse-traps has to that of an engineer, but my little exploits in this way have at times amused me so much, that I have often wished myself a good one: Such a You I I have |