find them, but have unspeakable pleasure in being ftill beloved by an old one. I hope that now our correfpondence has fuffered its laft interruption, and that we shall go down together to the grave, chatting and chirping as merrily as fuch a scene of things as this will permit.

I am happy that my poems have pleased you. My volume has afforded me no fuch pleasure at any time, either while I was writing it, or since its publication, as I have derived from yours, and my uncle's opinion of it. I make certain allowances for partiality, and for that peculiar quickness of taste, with which you both relish what you like, and after all draw-backs upon thofe accounts duly made, find myself rich in the measure of your approbation that ftill remains. But above all I honour John Gilpin, fince it was he who first encouraged you to write. I made him on purpose to laugh at, and he ferved his purpose well; but I am now in debt to him for a more valuable acquifition than all the laughter in the world amounts to, the recovery of my intercourse with you, which is to me ineftimable. My benevolent and generous coufin; when I was once asked if I wanted any thing, and given delicately enough to understand that the inquirer was ready to fupply all my occafions, I thankfully and civilly, but pofitively declined the favour. I neither fuffer, nor have fuffered any fuch inconveniences as I had not much rather endure, than come under obligations of that fort to a person comparatively with yourself a stranger to me. But to you 1 answer otherwife. I know you thoroughly, and the liberality of your difpofition; and have that confummate confidence in the fincerity of your wish to serve me, that delivers me from all awkward constraint, and from all fear of tref paffing by acceptance. To you, therefore, I reply, yes. Whenfoever, and whatsoever, and in what manner foever you please; and add moreover, that my affection for the

own;

giver is fuch, as will increase to me tenfold the fatisfac tion that I fhall have in receiving. It is neceffary however that I should let you a little into the ftate of my finances, that you may not suppose them more narrowly circumfcribed than they are. Since Mrs. Unwin and I have lived at Olney, we have had but one purfe; although during the whole of that time, till lately, her income was nearly double mine. Her revenues indeed are now in fome measure reduced, and do not much exceed my the worst consequence of this is, that we are forced to deny ourselves fome things which hitherto we have been better able to afford, but they are fuch things as neither life, nor the well being of life depend upon. My own income has been better than it is, but when it was best, it would not have enabled me to live as my connexions demanded that I fhould, had it not been combined with a better than itself, at least at this end of the kingdom. Of this I had full proof during three months that I spent in lodgings at Huntingdon, in which time by the help of good management, and a clear notion of economical matters, I contrived to spend the income of a twelvemonth. Now, my beloved coufin, you are in poffeffion of the whole cafe as it ftands. Strain no points to your own inconvenience or hurt, for there is no need of it; but indulge yourself in communicating (no matter what) that you can spare without miffing it, fince by fo doing you will be fure to add to the comforts of my life, one of the sweetest that I can enjoy, a token and proof of your affection.

In the affairs of my next publication, toward which you also offer me fo kindly your affiftance, there will be no need that you fhould help me in the manner that you propofe. It will be a large work, confifting I should imagine, of fix volumes at least. The 12th of this month I shall have spent a year upon it, and it will cost me

more than another. I do not love the bookfellers well enough to make them a prefent of fach a labour, but intend to publish by fubfcription. Your vote and interest, my dear coufin, upon the occafion, if you please, but nothing more! I will trouble you with fome papers of propofals, when the time fhall come, and am sure that you will circulate as many for me as you can.

Now

my dear I am going to tell you a fecret. It is a great fecret, that you must not whisper even to your cat. No creature is at this moment apprized of it, but Mrs. Unwin, and her fon. I am making a new translation of Homer, and am upon the point of finishing the twentyfirst book of the Iliad. The reasons upon which I undertake this Herculean labour, and by which I justify an enterprize in which I feem effectually anticipated by Pope, although in fact, he has not anticipated me at all, I may poffibly give you, if you wish for them, when I can find nothing more interefting to fay. A period which I do not conceive to be very near! I have not anfwered many things in you letter, nor can do it at prefent for want of room. I cannot believe but that I should know you, notwithstanding all that time may have done. There is not a feature of your face, could I meet it upon the road by itfelf, that I fhould not inftantly recollect. I fhould say that is my coufin's nofe, or those are her lips and her chin, and no woman upon earth can claim them but herself. As for me, I am a very smart youth of my years. I am not indeed grown grey fo much as I am grown bald. No matter. There was more hair in the world than ever had the honour to belong to me. Accordingly having found just enough to curl a little at my ears, and to intermix with a little of my own that still hangs behind, I appear, if you see me in an afternoon, to have a very decent head-dress, not easily distinguished from my natural growth; which be

ing worn with a small bag, and a black ribband about my neck, continues to me the charms of my youth, even on the verge of age. Away with the fear of writing too often.

Yours, my dearest coufin, W. C.

P. S. That the view I give you of myfelf may be complete, I add the two following items-That I am in debt to nobody, and that I grow fat.

LETTER XLII.

To Lady HESKETH.

MY DEAREST COUSIN,

I AM glad that I always loved you as I did. It releases me from any occafion to fufpect that my present affection for you is indebted for its existence to any selfish confiderations. No. I am fure I love you difinterestedly, and for your own fake, because I never thought of you with any other fenfations than thofe of the truest affection, even while I was under the influence of a perfuafion, that I fhould never hear from you again. But with my prefent feelings, fuperadded to those that I always had for you, I find it no easy matter to do justice to my fenfations. I perceive myself in a state of mind fimilar to that of the traveller, described in Pope's Meffiah, who as he passes through a sandy defert, starts at the fudden and unexpected found of a waterfall. You have placed me in a fituation new to me, and in which I feel myself fomewhat puzzled how I ought to behave. At the fame time that I would not grieve you by putting a check upon your bounty, I would be as careful not to abuse it, as if I were a miser, and the question not about your money, but my own. Although I do not fufpect that a fecret to you, my coufin, is any burthen, yet having maturely confidered

that point fince I wrote my last, I feel myself altogether disposed to release you from the injunction to that effect under which I laid you. I have now made fuch a progrefs in my tranflation, that I need neither fear that I shall stop short of the end, nor that any other rider of Pegaffus fhould overtake me. Therefore if at any time it fhould fall fairly in your way, or you should feel yourfelf invited to fay that I am fo occupied, you have my Poetship's free permiffion. Dr. Johnson read and recommended my first volume.

W. C.

LETTER XLIII.

To JOSEPH HILL, Efq.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Dec. 24, 1785

TILL I had made fuch a progress in my prefent undertaking, as to put it out of all doubt, that, if I lived, I should proceed in and finish it, I kept the matter to myfelf. It would have done me little honour to have told my friends, that I had an arduous enterprize in hand, if afterwards I must have told them, that I had dropped it. Knowing it to have been univerfally the opinion of the literati, ever fince they have allowed themselves to confider the matter coolly, that a tranflation, properly fo called, of Homer, is, notwithftanding what Pope has done, a defideratum in the Englifh language, it ftruck me that an attempt to supply the deficiency would be an honourable one; and having made myself in former years fomewhat critically a master of the original, I was by this double confideration induced to make the attempt myself. I am now tranflating into blank verfe the laft book of the Iliad, and mean to publish by fubfcription.

W. C.