Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

"be tube, is neither more, nor less, than the mono

[ocr errors]

16

[ocr errors]

syllable ink, but I wrote it in great haste, and "the want of sufficient precision in the character, "has occasioned your mistake: you will be satisfied, especially when you see the sense elucidated by the explanation. "But I question, whether the Doctor would quit his ground, or allow any author to be a competent judge in his own case. The world, however, would acquiesce immediately, and vote the critic useless.

James Andrews, who is my Michael Angelo, pays me many compliments, on my success, in the art of drawing, but I have not yet the vanity to think myself, qualified to furnish your apartment. If I should ever attain to the degree of self-opinion, requisite to such an undertaking, I shall labour at it with pleasure. I can only say, though I hope not with the affected modesty of the above-mentioned Dr. Bentley, who said the same thing.

of the

Me quoque dicunt

Vatem pastores. Sed non Ego credulus illis.

A crow, rook, or raven, has built a nest in one young elm-trees, at the side of Mrs. Aspray's

orchard.

In the violent storm, that blew yesterday

morning, I saw it agitated to a degree, that seemed to threaten its immediate destruction, and versified the following thoughts upon the occasion.*

LETTER L.

To the Revd. WILLIAM UNWIN.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

W. C.

June 8, 1780.

It is possible I might have

indulged myself in the pleasure of writing to you, without waiting for a Letter from you, but for a reason, which you will not easily guess.

communicated to me, the satisfaction

Your Mother

you expressed in my correspondence, that you thought me entertaining and clever, and so forth :-Now you must know, I love praise dearly, especially from the judicious, and those, who have so much delicacy themselves, as not to offend mine in giving it. But then, I found this consequence attending, or likely to attend, the eulogium you bestowed-if my friend thought me

*

Cowper's fable of the Raven concluded this Letter,

witty before, he shall think me ten times more witty hereafter where I joked once, I will joke five times, and, for one sensible remark, I will send him a dozen. Now this foolish vanity would have spoilt me quite, and would have made me as disgusting a Letter-writer, as Pope, who seems to have thought, that unless a sentence was well turned, and every period pointed with some conceit, it was not worth the carriage. Accordingly he is to me, except in a very few instances, the most disagreeable maker of epistles, that ever I met with. I was willing, therefore, to wait 'till the impression your commendation had made, upon the foolish part of me, was worn off, that I might scribble away as usual, and write my uppermost thoughts, and those only.

You are better skilled in ecclesiastical law than

I am Mrs. P. desires me to inform her, whether a parson can be obliged to take an apprentice. For some of her husband's opposers, at D, threaten to clap one upon him. Now I think it would be rather hard, if clergymen, who are not allowed to exercise any handicraft whatever, should be subject to such an imposition. If Mr. P. was a cordwainer, or a breeches-maker, all the week, and a preacher only on Sundays, it would seem reasonable enough, in

that case, that he should take an apprentice, if he chose it. But even then, in my poor judgment, he ought to be left to his option. If they mean by an apprentice, a pupil, whom they will oblige him to hew into a parson, and after chipping away the block that hides the minister within, to qualify him to stand erect in a pulpit—that indeed, is another consideration-But still, we live in a free country, and I cannot bring myself even to suspect, that an English divine can possibly be liable to such compulsion. Ask your Uncle however; for he is wiser in these things, than either of us.

I thank you for your two inscriptions, and like the last the best; the thought is just, and fine

-but the two last lines are sadly damaged, by the monkish jingle of peperit and reperit. I have not yet translated them, nor do I promise to do it, though at some idle hour perhaps I may. In return, I send you a translation, of a simile, in the Paradise Lost. -Not having that Poem at hand, I cannot refer you to the book, and page, but you may hunt for it, if you think it worth your while.It begins

"So when, from mountain tops, the dusky clouds

[blocks in formation]

Quales aërii montis de vertice nubes

Cum surgunt, et jam Boreæ tumida ora quiêrunt,

Cælum hilares abdit, spissâ caligine, vultus:

Tùm si jucundo tandem sol prodeat ore,

Et croceo montes et pascua lumine tingat,
Gaudent omnia, aves mulcent concentibus agros,
Balatuque ovium colles, vallesque resultant.

If you spy any fault in my Latin, tell me, for I am sometimes in doubt, but as I told you, when you was here, I have not a Latin book in the world to consult, or correct a mistake by; and some years have past since I was a school-boy.

AN ENGLISH VERSIFICATION OF A

THOUGHT,

THAT POPPED INTO MY HEAD, ABOUT TWO MONTHS SINCE.

Sweet stream! that winds through yonder glade

Apt emblem of a virtuous maid!

« PoprzedniaDalej »