I

Talk not of

with me in all my feelings upon this fubject, and longs alfo to fee you. I fhould have told you fo by the last poft, but have been fo completely occupied by this tormenting fpecimen, that it was impoffible to do it. fent the General a letter on Monday, that would distress. and alarm him-I fent him another yesterday that will, I hope, quiet him again. Johnfon has apologized very civilly for the multitude of his friend's ftrictures, and his friend has promised to confine himself in future to a comparison of me with the original, fo that I doubt not we shall jog on merrily together. And now my dear let me tell you once more that your kindness in promifing us a vifit has charmed us both. I fhall fee you againI fhall hear your voice, we fhall take walks together; I will fhew you my prospects, the hovel, the alcove, the Oufe, and its banks, every thing that I have described. I anticipate the pleasure of thofe days not very far diftant, and feel a part of it at this moment. an inn, mention it not for your life. We have never had so many visitors but we could easily accommodate them all, though we have received Unwin, and his wife, and his fifter, and his fon, all at once. My dear, I will not let you come till the end of May, or beginning of June, becaufe before that time my green-house will not be ready to receive us, and it is the only pleasant room belonging to us. When the plants go out, we go in. I line it with mats, and spread the floor with mats, and there you fhall fit with a bed of mignonette at your fide, and a hedge of honey-fuckles, rofes, and jafmine; and I will make you a bouquet of myrtle every day. Sooner than the time I mention the country will not be in complete beauty. And I will tell you what you fhall find at your first entrance. Imprimis, as foon as you have entered the vestibule, if you caft a look on either fide of you, you fhall fee on the right hand a box

of my making. It is the box in which have been lo ed all my hares, and in which lodges Pufs at presen But he, poor fellow, is worn out with age, and promises to die before you can see him. On the right hand stands a cupboard, the work of the fame Author. It was once a dove-cage, but I transformed it. Oppofite to you ftands a table which I also made, but a merciless fervant having scrubbed it until it became paralytic, it ferves no purpose now but of ornament, and all my clean fhoes ftand under it. On the left hand, at the farther end of this fuperb vestibule, you will find the door of the parlour into which I will conduct you, and where I will introduce you to Mrs. Unwin (unless we should meet her before) and where we will be as happy as the day is long. Order yourfelf, my coufin, to the Swan at Newport, and there you fhall find me ready to conduct you to Olney.

My dear, I have told Homer what you fay about casks and urns, and have asked him whether he is fure that it is a cafk in which Jupiter keeps his wine. He fwears that it is a cafk, and that it will never be any thing better than a cask to eternity. So if the god is content with it, we must even wonder at his taste, and be fo too.

Adieu, my dearest, dearest coufin.

W.C.

LETTER XLVII.

To Lady HESKETH.

MY DEAREST COUSIN,

OLNEY, Feb. 11, 1786.

IT must be I fuppofe a fortnight or thereabout, fince I wrote laft, I feel myself fo alert and fo ready to write again. Be that as it may, here I come. We talk of nobody but you; what we will do with you,

when we get you; where you fhall walk, where you fhall fleep, in fhort every thing that bears the remotest relation to your well being at Olney, occupies all our talking time, which is all that I do not spend at Troy.

I

I have every reafon for writing to you as often as I can, but I have a particular reafon for doing it now. want to tell you that by the Diligence on Wednesday next I mean to fend you a quire of my Homer for Maty's perufal. It will contain the firft book, and as much of the fecond as brings us to the catalogue of the fhips, and is every morfel of the revised copy that I have transcribed. My deareft coufin, read it yourself—Let the General read it. Do what you please with it, so that it reach Johnson in due time, but let Maty be the only critic that has any thing to do with it. The vexation, the perplexity that attends a multiplicity of criticifms by various hands, many of which are fure to be futile, many of them ill-founded, and fome of them contradictory to others, is inconceivable, except by the author, whofe ill-fated work happens to be the fubject of them. This alfo appears to me felf evident: That if a work have paft under the review of one man of tafte and learning, and have had the good fortune to pleafe him, his approbation gives fecurity for that of all others qualified like himself. I fpeak thus, my dear, after having juft efcaped from fuch a form of trouble, occafioned by endlefs remarks, hints, fuggeftions, and objections, as drove me almost to defpair, and to the very edge of a refolution to drop my undertaking forever. With infinite difficulty I at laft fifted the chaff from the wheat, availed myfelf of what appeared to me to be just, and rejected the reft, but not till the labour and anxiety had nearly undone all that Kerr had been doing for me. My beloved coufin, truft me for it, as you fafely may, that temper, vanity, and felf importance had nothing to

It was merely the

do in all this distress that I suffered. effect of an alarm, that I could not help taking, when I compared the great trouble I had with a few lines only, thus handled, with that, which I forefaw fuch handling of the whole muft neceffarily give me. I felt before hand that my constitution would not bear it. I fhall fend up in this second specimen, in a box that I have had made on purpose, and when Maty has done with the copy, and you have done with it yourself, then you must return it in faid box to my tranflatorship.— Though Johnfon's friend has teazed me fadly, I verily believe that I fhall have no more fuch caufe to complain of him. We now understand one another, and I firmly believe that I might have gone the world through before I had found his equal in an accurate and familiar acquaintance with the original.

A letter to Mr. Urban in the laft Gentleman's Magazine, of which I's book is the fubject, pleases me more than any thing I have feen in the way of eulogium yet. I have no guess of the author.

I do not wish to remind the Chancellor of his promise. Afk you why, my coufin? Because I fuppofe it would be impoffible. He has no doubt forgotten it entirely, and would be obliged to take my word for the truth of it, which I could not bear. We drank tea together with Mrs. Ce and her fifter, in King-Street, Bloomsbury, and there was the promise made. I faid, Thurlow-I am nobody, and fhall be always nobody, and you will be Chancellor-You fhall provide for me when He smiled and replied, I furely will. Thefe you are. ladies, faid I, are witneffes. He ftill fmiled, and said, let them be fo, for I will certainly do it. But alas! twenty-four years have paffed fince the day of the date thereof, and to mention it now would be to upbraid him with inattention to his plighted troth. Neither do

I fuppofe he could easily serve such a creature as I am if he would.

Adieu whom I love entirely.

LETTER XLVIII.

W. C.

To Lady HESKETH.

OLNEY, Feb. 19, 1786.

MY DEAREST COUSIN,

SINCE fo it must be, fo it fhall be.

An enemy

If you will not fleep under the roof of a friend, may you never fleep under the roof of an enemy. however you will not presently find. Mrs. Unwin bids me mention her affectionately, and tell you that she will ingly gives up a part for the fake of the reft, willingly at least as far as willingly may confift with fome reluctance : I feel my reluctance too. Our defign was, that you fhould have flept in the room that ferves me for a study, and its having been occupied by you would have been an additional recommendation of it to me. But all reluctances are fuperfeded by the thought of feeing you; and because we have nothing so much at heart as the wish to fee you happy and comfortable, we are defirous therefore to accommodate you to your own mind, and not to ours. Mrs. Unwin has already fecured for you an apartment, or rather two, just such as we could wish. The house in which you will find them, is within thirty yards of our own, and opposite to it. The whole affair is thus commodiously adjusted; and now I have nothing to do but to wifh for June; and June, my coufin, was never fo wished for fince June was made. I fhall have a thousand things to hear, and a thousand to fay, and they will all rush into my mind together, till it will be fo crowded with things. impatient to be faid, that for fome time I fhall fay nothing. But no matter-Sooner or later they will all