take my word for the truth of it, which I could not bear. We drank tea together with Mrs. C-e, and her Sister, in KingStreet, Bloomsbury, and there was the promise made.-I said Thurlow-I am nobody, and shall be always nobody, and you will be Chancellor-You shall provide for me when you are. He smiled and replied, I surely will. These ladies, said I, are wit

nesses. He still smiled, and said, let them be so, for I will certainly do it. But alas! twenty-four years have passed since 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 sup

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

If

Since so it must be, so it shall be.

you will not sleep under the roof of a friend, may you never sleep under the roof of an enemy. An enemy however you will not presently find. Mrs. Unwin bids me mention her affectionately, and tell you that she willingly gives up a part for the sake of the rest, willingly at least as far as willingly may consist with some re

luctance :

luctance: I feel my reluctance too. Our design was, that you should have slept in the room that serves me for a study, and its having been occupied by you would have been an additional reBut all reluctances are superseded by

commendation of it to me. the thought of seeing you; and because we have nothing so much at heart as the wish to see you happy and comfortable, we are desirous therefore to accommodate you to your own mind, and not to ours. Mrs. Unwin has already secured 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 wish for June, and June, my Cousin, was never so wished for since June was made. I shall have a thousand things to hear, and a thousand to say, and they will all rush into my mind together, till it will be so crowded with things impatient to be said, that for some time I shall say nothing.

But

no matter-Sooner or later they will all come out; and since we shall have you the longer for not having you under our own roof, (a circumstance that more than any thing reconciles us to that measure) they will stand the better chance. After so long a separation, a separation that of late seemed likely to last for life, we shall meet each other as alive from the dead, and for my own part I can truly say, that I have not a friend in the other world whose resurrection would give me greater pleasure.

I am

I am truly happy, my dear, in having pleasad you with what you have seen of my Homer. I wish that all English readers had your unsophisticated, or rather unadulterated taste, and could relish simplicity like you. But I am well aware that in this respect I am under a disadvantage, and that many, especially many ladies, missing many turns and prettinesses of expression, that they have admired in Pope, will account my Translation in those particulars defective. But I comfort myself with the thought, that in reality it is no defect, on the contrary that the want of all such embellishments as do not belong to the original, will be one of its principal merits with persons indeed capable of relishing Homer. He is the best Poet that ever lived for many reasons, but for none more than for that majestic plainness that distinguishes him from all others. As an accomplished person moves gracefully without thinking of it, in like manner the dignity of Homer seems to cost him no labour. It was natural to him to say great things, and to say them well, and little ornaments were beneath his notice. If Maty, my dearest Cousin, should return to you my copy with any such strictures as may make it necessary for me to see it again before it goes to Otherwise to Johnson, in that case you shall send it to me. Johnson immediately. For he writes me word he wishes his friend to go to work upon it as soon as possible. When you come, my dear, we will hang all these Critics together, for they have worried me without remorse or conscience, at least one of them has: I had actually murthered more than a few of the best lines in the speci

men,

men, in compliance with his requisitions, but plucked up my courage at last, and in the very last opportunity that I had, recovered them to life again by restoring the original reading. At the same time I readily confess that the Specimen is the better for all this discipline its Author has undergone, but then it has been more indebted for its improvement to that pointed accuracy of examination, to which I was myself excited, than to any proposed amendments from Mr. Critic; for as sure as you are my Cousin, whom I long to see at Olney, so surely would he have done me irreparable mischief, if I would have given him leave.

My friend Bagot writes to me in a most friendly strain, and calls loudly upon me for original poetry. When I shall have done with Homer probably he will not call in vain; having found the prime feather of a Swan on the banks of the smug and silver Trent, he keeps it for me.

Adieu dear Cousin,

W. C.

I am sorry that the General has such indifferent health. He must not die. I can by no means spare a person so kind to me.

LETTER XLIX.

To Lady HESKETH.

Olney, March 6, 1786.

MY DEAREST COUSIN,

Your opinion has more weight

with me than that of all the Critics in the world, and to give you a proof of it, I make you a concession that I would hardly have made to them all united. I do not indeed absolutely covenant, promise, and agree, that I will discard all my Elisions, but I hereby bind myself to dismiss as many of them, as, without sacrificing energy to sound, I can. It is incumbent upon me in the mean time, to say something in justification of the few that I shall retain, that I may not seem a Poet mounted rather on a Mule than on Pegasus. In the first place, The, is a barbarism. We are indebted for it to the Celts, or the Goths, or to the Saxons, or perhaps to them all. In the two best languages that ever were spoken, the Greek and the Latin, there is no similar incumbrance of expression to be found. Secondly, The perpetual use of it in our language, is to us miserable Pocts, attended with two great inconveniences. Our verse consisting only of ten syllables, it not unfrequently happens, that the fifth part of a line is to be engrossed, and necessarily too, (unless Elision prevents it) by this abominable intruder; and which is worse in my account, open vowels are continually the consequence-The element-The air, &c. Thirdly, the French who

are