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their approbation, I began to feel the workings of ambition. It is well, said I, that my friends are pleased, but friends are sometimes partial; and mine, I have reason to think, are not altogether free from bias. Methinks I should like to hear a stranger or two speak well of me. I was presently gratified by the approbation of the London Magazine, and the Gentleman's, particularly by that of the former, and by the plaudit of Dr. Franklin. By the way, magazines are publications we have but little respect for, till we ourselves are chronicled in them; and then they assume an importance in our esteem, which before we could not allow them. But the Monthly Review, the most formidible of all my judges, is still behind. What will that critical Rhadamanthus say, when my shivering genius shall appear before him? Still he keeps me in hot water, and I must wait another month for his award. Alas! when I wish for a favourable sentence from that quarter (to confess a weakness, that I should not confess to all), I feel myself not a little influenced by a tender regard to my reputation here, even among my neighbours at Olney. Here are watch-makers, who themselves are wits, and who, at present perhaps, think me one. Here is a carpenter, and a baker; and not to mention others, here is your idol Mr. whose smile is fame. All these read the Monthly Review, and all these will set me down for a dunce, if those terrible critics should show them the example. But oh! wherever else I am accounted dull, dear Mr. Griffith, let me pass for a genius at Olney.

We are sorry for little William's illness. It is however the privilege of infancy to recover almost

immediately, what it has lost by sickness. We are sorry too for Mr. -'s dangerous condition. But he that is well prepared for the great journey, cannot enter on it too soon for himself, though his friends will weep at his departure. Yours.

LETTER XXX.

WILLIAM COWPER, ESQ. TO THE REV. W. UNWIN.

Nov. 18, 1782.

MY DEAR WILLIAM, On the part of the poor, and on our part, be pleased to make acknowledgments, such as the occasion calls for, to our beneficial friend Mr.

I call him ours, because having experienced his kindness to myself in a former instance, and in the present his disinterested readiness to succour the distressed, my ambition will be satisfied with nothing less. He may depend upon the strictest secrecy; no creature shall hear him mentioned, either now or hereafter, as the person from whom we have received this bounty. But when I speak of him, or hear him spoken of by others, which sometimes happens, I shall not forget what is due to so rare a character. I wish, and your mother wishes it too, that he could sometimes take us in his way to -; he will find us happy to receive a person whom we must needs account it an honour to know. We shall exercisse our best discretion in the disposal of the money; but in this town, where the Gospel has been preached so many years, where the people had been favoured so

long with laborious and conscientious ministers, it is not an easy thing to find those who make no profession of religion at all, and are yet proper objects of charity. The profane are so profane, so drunken, dissolute, and in every respect worthless, that to make them partakers of his bounty, would be to abuse it. We promise, however, that none shall touch it but such as are miserably poor, yet at the same time industrious and honest, two characters frequently united here, where the most watchful and unremitting labour will hardly procure them bread. We make none but the cheapest laces, and the price of them is fallen almost to nothing. Thanks are due to yourself likewise, and are hereby accordingly rendered, for waving your claim in behalf of your own parishioners. You are always with them, and they are always, at least some of them, the better for your residence among them. Olney is a populous place, inhabited chiefly by the half-starved and the ragged of the earth; and it is not possible for our small party, and small ability, to extend their operations so far as to be much felt among such numbers. Accept therefore your share of their gratitude, and be convinced, that when they pray for a blessing upon those who relieved their wants, He that answers that prayer, and when he answers it, will remember his servant at Stock.

I little thought when I was writing the history of John Gilpin, that he would appear in print-I intended to laugh, and to make two or three others laugh, of whom you were one. But now all the world laugh, at least if they have the same relish for a tale ridiculous in itself, and quaintly told, as

we have.-Well-they do not always laugh so innocently, and at so small an expense-for in a world like this, abounding with subjects for satire, and with satirical wits to mark them, a laugh that hurts nobody, has at least the grace of novelty to recommend it. Swift's darling motto was Vive la bagatelle-a good wish for a philosopher of his complexion, the greater part of whose wisdom, whencesoever it came, most certainly came not from above. La bagatelle-has no enemy in me, though it has neither so warm a friend, nor so able a one, as it had in him. If I trifle, and merely trifle, it is because I am reduced to it by necessitya melancholy that nothing else so effectually dis.perses, engages me sometimes in the arduous task of being merry by force. And strange as it may seem, the most ludicrous lines I ever wrote, have been written in the saddest mood, and, but for that saddest mood, perhaps had never been written at all.

I hear from Mrs. Newton, that some great persons have spoken with great approbation of a certain book-Who they are, and what they have said, I am to be told in a future letter. The Monthly Reviewers in the mean time have satisfied me well enough. Yours, my dear William.

LETTER XXXI.

WILLIAM COWPER, ESQ. TO THE REV. J. NEWTON. May 51, 1783.

WE rather rejoice than mourn with you on the occasion of Mrs. C's death. In the case of be

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lievers, death has lost his sting, not only with respect to those he takes away, but with respect to survivors also. Nature, indeed, will always suggest some causes of sorrow, when an amiable and Christian friend departs, but the Scripture, so many more, and so much more important reasons to rejoice, that on such occasions, perhaps more remarkably than on any other, sorrow is turned into joy. The law of our land is affronted if we say the king dies, and insists on it that he only demises. This, which is a fiction, where a monarch only is in question, in the case of a Christian, is reality and truth. He only lays aside a body, which it is his privilege to be encumbered with no longer; and instead of dying, in that moment he begins to live. But this the world does not understand, therefore the kings of it must go on demising to the end of the chapter.

LETTER XXXII.

WILLIAM COWPER, ESQ. TO THE REV. W. UNWIN.

June 8, 1783.

MY DEAR WILLIAM, OUR severest winter, commonly called the spring, is now over, and I find myself seated in my favourite recess, the green-house. In such a situation, so silent, so shady, where no human foot is heard, and where only my myrtles presume to peep in at the window, you may suppose I have no interruption to complain of, and that my thoughts are perfectly at my command. But the beauties of the

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