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 Poets, 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

are equally with the English chargeable with barbarism in this particular, dispose of their Le and their La without ceremony, and always take care that they shall be absorbed, both in verse and in prose, in the vowel that immediately follows them. Fourthly, and I believe lastly (and for your sake I wish it may prove so) the practice of cutting short a The, is warranted by Milton, who of all English Poets that ever lived, had certainly the finest ear. Dr. Warton indeed has dared to say that he had a bad one, for which he deserves, as far as critical demerit can deserve it, to lose his own. I thought I had done, but there is still a fifthly behind, and it is this. That the custom of abbreviating The, belongs to the stile in which, in my advertisement annexed to the specimen, I profess to write. The use of that stile would have warranted me in the practice of much greater liberty of this sort than I ever intended to take. In perfect consistence with that stile I might say I' th' tempest, I' th' door-way, &c. which however I would not allow myself to do, because I was aware that it would be objected to, and with reason. But it seems to me for the causes above said, that when I shorten The, before a vowel, or before wh, as in the line you mention,

"Than th' whole broad Hellespont in all his parts."

my license is not equally exceptionable. Because W, though he rank as a consonant in the word whole, is not allowed to announce himself to the ear, and His an aspirate. But as I said at the beginning.

so say I still, I am most willing to conform myself to your very sensible observation, that it is necessary, if we would please, to consult the taste of our own day. Neither would I have pelted you, my dearest Cousin, with any part of this volley of good reasons, had I not designed them as an answer to those objections which you say you have heard from others. But I only mention Though satisfactory to myself, I wave them, and will allow to The his whole dimensions, whensoever it can be done.

them.

Thou only Critic of my verse that is to be found in all the earth whom I love, what shall I say in answer to your own objection to that passage.

"On th' old man's hand, and push'd it gently away."

I can say neither more nor less than this, that when our dear friend the General sent me his opinion of the specimen, quoting those very words from it, he added, "With this part I was particularly pleased: there is nothing in Poetry more descriptive." Such were his very words. Taste, my dear, is various, there is nothing so various, and even between persons of the best taste, there are diversities of opinion on the same subject, for which it is not possible to account. So much for these matters.

You advise me to consult the General, and to confide in him. I follow your advice, and have done both. By the last post I asked

asked his permission to send him the Books of my Homer, as fast as I should finish them off. I shall be glad of his remarks, and more glad than of any thing, to do that which I hope may be agreeable to him. They will of course pass into your hands before they are sent to Johnson. The quire that I sent is now in the hands of Johnson's friend. I intended to have told you in my last, but forgot it, that Johnson behaves very handsomely in the affair of my two Volumes. He acts with a liberality not often found in persons of his occupation, and to mention it when occasion calls me to it, is a justice due to him.

I am very much pleased with Mr. Stanley's Letter-several compliments were paid me on the subject of that first Volume by my own friends, but I do not recollect that I ever knew the opinion of a stranger about it before, whether favorable or otherwise; I only heard by a side wind that it was very much read in Scotland, and more than here.

Farewell my dearest Cousin, whom we expect, of whom we talk continually, and whom we continually long for.

W. C.

Your anxious wishes for my success delight me, and you may rest assured, my dear, that I have all the ambition on the subject that you can wish me to feel. I more than admire my Author. I often stand astonished at his beauties. I am for ever amused with the

translation

translation of him, and I have received a thousand encouragements. These are all so many happy omens that, I hope, shall be verified by the event.

LETTER L.

To JOSEPH HILL, Esqr.

April 5, 1786.

I did, as you suppose, bestow all pos

sible consideration on the subject of an apology for my Homerican undertaking. I turned the matter about in my mind an hundred different ways, and in every way in which it would present itself, found it an impracticable business. It is impossible for me, with what delicacy so ever I may manage it, to state the objections that lie against Pope's Translation, without incurring odium, and the imputation of arrogance; foreseeing this danger, I choose to say nothing.

W. C.

P. S. You may well wonder at my courage, who have undertaken a work of such enormous length. You would wonder more you knew that I translated the whole Iliad with no other help than a Clavis. But I have since equipped myself better for this

if

immense journey, and am revising the Work in company with a good Commentator.

LETTER