Some call aloud for original verse, others for more translation, and 'others for other things. Providence, I hope, will direct me in my choice, for other guide I have none, nor wish for another.

God bless you my dearest Johnny.

W. C.

LETTER V.

To SAMUEL ROSE, Esqr.

MY DEAR FRIEND,.

The Lodge, Sept. 14, 1791.

Whoever reviews me will in fact

have a laborious task of it, in the performance of which he ought to move leisurely, and to exercise much critical discernment. In the mean time my courage is kept up by the arrival of such testimonies in my favour, as give me the greatest pleasure; coming from quarters the most respectable. I have reason, therefore, to hope that our periodical judges will not be very adverse to me, and that perhaps they may even favour me. If one man of taste and letters is pleased, another man so qualified can hardly be displeased, and if Critics of a different description grumble, they will not however materially hurt me.

You, who know how necessary it is to me to be employed, will be glad to hear that I have been called to a new literary engagement, and that I have not refused it. A Milton that is to rival,

and

and, if possible, to exceed in splendor, Boydell's Shakspeare, is in contemplation, and I am in the Editor's office. Fuseli is the Painter. My business will be to select notes from others, and to write original notes, to translate the Latin and Italian poems, and to give a correct text. I shall have years allowed me to do it in.

LETTER VI.

TO JOHN JOHNSON, Esqr.

W. C.

MY DEAR JOHNNY,

Weston, Oct. 31, 1791.

Your kind and affectionate Letter well

deserves my thanks, and should have had them long ago, had I not been obliged lately to give my attention to a mountain of unanswered Letters, which I have just now reduced to a mole-hill; yours lay at the bottom, and I have at last worked my way down to it.

It gives me great pleasure that you have found a house to your minds. May you all three be happier in it than the happiest that ever occupied it before you! But my chief delight of all is to learn that you and Kitty are so completely cured of your long and threatening maladies. I always thought highly of Dr. Kerr, but his extraordinary success in your two instances has even inspired me with an affection for him.

my

My eyes are much better than when I wrote last, though seldom perfectly well many days together. At this season of the year I catch perpetual colds, and shall continue to do so till I have got the better of that tenderness of habit with which the summer never fails to affect me.

I am glad that you have heard well of my Work in your country. Sufficient proofs have reached me from various quarters that I have not ploughed the field of Troy in vain.

Were you here I would gratify you with an enumeration of particulars, but since you are not, it must content you to be told that I have every reason to be satisfied.

Mrs. Unwin, I think, in her Letter to Cousin Balls, made mention of my new engagement. I have just entered on it, and therefore can at present say little about it.

It is a very creditable one in itself, and may I but acquit myself of it with sufficiency, it will do me honour. The Commentator's part however is a new one to me, and one that I little thought to appear in.

Remember your promise that I shall see you in the spring.

The Hall has been full of company ever since you went, and at present my Catharina is there singing and playing like an Angel.

W. C.

LETTER

LETTER VII.

To JOSEPH HILL, Esqr.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Nov. 14, 1791.

I have waited and wished for

your opinion with the feelings that belong to the value I have for it, and am very happy to find it so favourable. In my table-drawer I treasure up a bundle of suffrages, sent me by those of whose approbation I was most ambitious, and shall presently insert yours among them.

I know not why we should quarrel with compound epithets : it is certain, at least, they are as agreeable to the genius of our language, as to that of the Greek, which is sufficiently proved by their being admitted into our common and colloquial dialect. Black-eyed, nut-brown, crook-shank'd, hump-back'd, are all compound epithets, and, together with a thousand other such, are used continually, even by those who profess a dislike to such combinations in poetry. Why then do they treat with so much familiarity, a thing that they say disgusts them? I doubt if they could give this question a reasonable answer; unless they should answer it by confessing themselves unreasonable.

I have made a considerable progress in the translation of Milton's Latin Poems. I give them, as opportunity offers, all the variety of measure that I can. Some I render in heroic rhyme, some

VOL. II.

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in stanzas, some in seven, and some in eight syllable measure, and some in blank verse. They will all together, I hope, make an agreeable miscellany for the English reader. They are certainly good in themselves, and cannot fail to please, but by the fault of their Translator.

LETTER VIII.

W. C.

MY DEAR SIR,

To the Revd. Mr. HURDIS.

Weston, Dec. 10, 1791,

I am obliged to you for wishing that I were employed in some original work rather than in translation. To tell you the truth, I am of your mind; and unless I could find another Homer, I shall promise (I believe) and vow, when I have done with Milton, never to translate again. But my veneration for our great countryman is equal to what I feel for the Grecian; and consequently I am happy, and feel myself honourably employed whatever I do for Milton. I am now translating his Epitaphium Damonis, a Pastoral in my judgment equal to any of Virgil's Bucolics, but of which Dr. Johnson (so it pleased him) speaks, as I remember, contemptuously. But he who never saw any beauty in a rural scene was not likely to have much taste for a Pastoral. pace quiescat.

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