The Collected Works. William Cowper
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THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.
Olney, July 2, 1780.
Carissime, I am glad of your confidence, and have reason to hope I shall never abuse it. If you trust me with a secret, I am hermetically sealed; and if you call for the exercise of my judgment, such as it is, I am never freakish or wanton in the use of it, much less mischievous and malignant. Critics, I believe, do not often stand so clear of those vices as I do. I like your epitaph, except that I doubt the propriety of the word immaturus; which, I think, is rather applicable to fruits than flowers; and except the last pentameter, the assertion it contains being rather too obvious a thought to finish with; not that I think an epitaph should be pointed like an epigram. But still there is a closeness of thought and expression necessary in the conclusion of all these little things, that they may leave an agreeable flavour upon the palate. Whatever is short should be nervous, masculine, and compact. Little men are so; and little poems should be so; because, where the work is short, the author has no right to the plea of weariness, and laziness is never admitted as an available excuse in any thing. Now you know my opinion, you will very likely improve upon my improvement, and alter my alterations for the better. To touch and re-touch is, though some writers boast of negligence, and others would be ashamed to show their foul copies, the secret of almost all good writing, especially in verse. I am never weary of it myself, and, if you would take as much pains as I do, you would have no need to ask for my corrections.
HIC SEPULTUS EST
INTER SUORUM LACRYMAS
GULIELMUS NORTHCOT,
Gulielmi et Mariæ filius
UNICUS, UNICE DILECTUS,
QUI FLORIS RITU SUCCISUS EST SEMIHIANTIS,
APRILIS DIE SEPTIMO,
1780, ÆT. 10.
Care, vale! Sed non æternum, care, valeto!
Namque iterum tecum, sim modo dignus, ero.
Tum nihil amplexus poterit divellere nostros,
Nec tu marcesces, nec lacrymabor ego.[59]
Having an English translation of it by me, I send it though it may be of no use.
Farewell! "But not for ever," Hope replies,
Trace but his steps, and meet him in the skies!
There nothing shall renew our parting pain,
Thou shalt not wither, nor I weep again.
The stanzas that I sent you are maiden ones, having never been seen by any eye but your mother's and your own.
If you send me franks, I shall write longer letters.—Valete, sicut et nos valemus! Amate, sicut et nos amamus!
W. C.
TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.[60]
Olney, June 3, 1780.
Mon Ami—By this time, I suppose, you have ventured to take your fingers out of your ears, being delivered from the deafening shouts of the most zealous mob that ever strained their lungs in the cause of religion. I congratulate you upon a gentle relapse into the customary sounds of a great city, which, though we rustics abhor them, as noisy and dissonant, are a musical and sweet murmur, compared with what you have lately heard. The tinkling of a kennel may be distinguished now, where the roaring of a cascade would have been sunk and lost. I never suspected, till the newspapers informed me of it, a few days since, that the barbarous uproar had reached Great Queen Street. I hope Mrs. Hill was in the country, and shall rejoice to hear that, as I am sure you did not take up the protestant cudgels[61] upon this hair-brained occasion, so you have not been pulled in pieces as a papist.
W. C.
The next letter to Mr. Hill affords a striking proof of Cowper's compassionate feelings towards the poor around him.
TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.
Olney, July 8, 1780.
Mon Ami—If you ever take the tip of the chancellor's ear between your finger and thumb, you can hardly improve the opportunity to better purpose, than if you should whisper into it the voice of compassion and lenity to the lace-makers. I am an eye-witness to their poverty, and do know that hundreds in this little town are upon the point of starving; and that the most unremitting industry is but barely sufficient to keep them from it. I know that the bill by which they would have been so fatally affected is thrown out, but Lord Stormont threatens them with another; and if another like it should pass, they are undone. We lately sent a petition to Lord Dartmouth; I signed it, and am sure the contents are true. The purport of it was to inform him, that there are very near one thousand two hundred lace-makers in this beggarly town, the most of whom had reason enough, while the bill was in agitation, to look upon every loaf they bought as the last they should ever be able to earn. I can never think it good policy to incur the certain inconvenience of ruining thirty thousand, in order to prevent a remote and possible damage, though to a much greater number. The measure is like a scythe, and the poor lace-makers are the sickly crop, that trembles before the edge of it. The prospect of a peace with America is like the streak of dawn in their horizon; but this bill is like a black cloud behind it, that threatens their hope of a comfortable day with utter extinction.
I do not perceive, till this moment, that I had tacked two similes together, a practice which, though warranted by the example of Homer, and allowed in an Epic Poem, is rather luxuriant and licentious in a letter; lest I should add another, I conclude.
W. C.
TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.
Olney, July 11, 1780.
I account myself sufficiently commended for my Latin exercise, by the number of translations it has undergone. That which you distinguished in the margin by the title of "better" was the production of a friend, and, except that, for a modest reason, he omitted the third couplet, I think it a good one. To finish the group, I have translated it myself; and, though I would not wish you to give it to the world, for more reasons than one, especially lest some French hero should call me to account for it, I add it on the other side. An author ought to be the best judge of his own meaning; and, whether I have succeeded or not, I cannot but wish, that where a translator is wanted, the writer was always to be his own.
False, cruel, disappointed, stung to the heart,
France quits the warrior's for the assassin's part;
To dirty hands a dirty bribe conveys,
Bids the low street and lofty palace blaze.
Her sons too weak to vanquish us alone,
She hires the worst and basest of our own.
Kneel, France! a suppliant conquers us with ease,
We always spare a coward on his knees.[62]
I have often wondered that Dryden's illustrious epigram on Milton,[63] (in my mind the second best that ever was made) has never been translated into Latin, for the admiration of the learned in other countries. I have at last presumed to venture upon the task myself. The great closeness of the original, which is equal, in that respect, to the most compact Latin I ever saw, made it extremely difficult.
Tres tria, sed longè distantia, sæcula vates
Ostentant tribus è gentibus eximios.