To the Rev. Walter Bagot.
Olney, May 20, 1786.
My dear Friend,—About three weeks since I met your sister Chester[334] at Mr. Throckmorton's, and from her learned that you are at Blithfield,[335] and in health. Upon the encouragement of this information it is that I write now; I should not otherwise have known with certainty where to find you, or have been equally free from the fear of unseasonable intrusion. May God be with you, my friend, and give you a just measure of submission to his will, the most effectual of all remedies for the evils of this changing scene. I doubt not that he has granted you this blessing already, and may he still continue it!
Now I will talk a little about myself: for except myself, living in this terrarum angulo, what can I have to talk about? In a scene of perfect tranquillity and the profoundest silence, I am kicking up the dust of heroic narrative and besieging Troy again. I told you that I had almost finished the translation of the Iliad, and I verily thought so. But I was never more mistaken. By the time when I had reached the end of the poem, the first book of my version was a twelvemonth old. When I came to consider it after having laid it by so long, it did not satisfy me. I set myself to mend it, and I did so; but still it appeared to me improveable, and that nothing would so effectually secure that point as to give to the whole book a new translation. With the exception of a very few lines I have so done, and was never in my life so convinced of the soundness of Horace's advice, to publish nothing in haste; so much advantage have I derived from doing that twice which I thought I had accomplished notably at once. He indeed recommends nine years' imprisonment of your verses before you send them abroad; but the ninth part of that time is, I believe, as much as there is need of to open a man's eyes upon his own defects, and to secure him from the danger of premature self-approbation. Neither ought it to be forgotten, that nine years make so wide an interval between the cup and the lip, that a thousand things may fall out between. New engagements may occur, which may make the finishing of that which a poet has begun impossible. In nine years he may rise into a situation, or he may sink into one, utterly incompatible with his purpose. His constitution may break in nine years, and sickness may disqualify him for improving what he enterprised in the days of health. His inclination may change, and he may find some other employment more agreeable, or another poet may enter upon the same work, and get the start of him. Therefore, my friend Horace, though I acknowledge your principle to be good, I must confess that I think the practice you would ground upon it carried to an extreme. The rigour that I exercised upon the first book I intend to exercise upon all that follow, and have now actually advanced into the middle of the seventh, no where admitting more than one line in fifty of the first translation. You must not imagine that I had been careless and hasty in the first instance. In truth I had not; but, in rendering so excellent a poet as Homer into our language, there are so many points to be attended to, both in respect of language and numbers, that a first attempt must be fortunate indeed if it does not call loud for a second. You saw the specimen, and you saw (I am sure) one great fault in it; I mean the harshness of some of the elisions. I do not altogether take the blame of these to myself; for into some of them I was actually driven and hunted by a series of reiterated objections made by a critical friend, whose scruples and delicacies teazed me out of all my patience. But no such monsters will be found in the volume.
Your brother Chester has furnished me with Barnes's Homer, from whose notes I collect here and there some useful information, and whose fair and legible type preserves from the danger of being as blind as was my author. I saw a sister of yours at Mr. Throckmorton's, but I am not good at making myself heard across a large room, and therefore nothing passed between us. I however felt that she was my friend's sister, and much esteemed her for your sake.
Ever yours,
W. C.
P.S.—The swan is called argutus (I suppose) a non arguendo, and canorus a non canendo. But whether he be dumb or vocal, more poetical than the eagle or less, it is no matter. A feather of either, in token of your approbation and esteem, will never, you may rest assured, be an offence to me.
Cowper seems to have reserved for the tried friendship of Newton the disclosure of those secret sorrows which he so seldom intruded on others. The communications which he makes on these occasions are painfully affecting. The mind labours, and the language responds to the intensity of the inward emotion. Sorrow is often sublime and eloquent, because the source of eloquence is not so much to be found in the powers of the intellect as in the acute feelings of an ardent and sensitive heart. It is the heart that unlocks the intellect.
These remarks will prepare the reader for the following letter.