To Joseph Hill, Esq. [493]
August 12, 1789.
My dear Friend,—I rejoice that you and Mrs. Hill are so agreeably occupied in your retreat.[494] August, I hope, will make us amends for the gloom of its many wintry predecessors. We are now gathering from our meadows, not hay, but muck; such stuff as deserves not the carriage, which yet it must have, that the after-crop may have leave to grow. The Ouse has hardly deigned to run in his channel since the summer began.
My Muse were a vixen if she were not always ready to fly in obedience to your commands. But what can be done? I can write nothing in the few hours that remain to me of this day that will be fit for your purpose, and unless I could despatch what I write by to-morrow's post, it would not reach you in time. I must add, too, that my friend, the vicar of the next parish,[495] engaged me, the day before yesterday, to furnish him by next Sunday with a hymn, to be sung on the occasion of his preaching to the children of the Sunday-school:[496] of which hymn I have not yet produced a syllable. I am somewhat in the case of lawyer Dowling, in "Tom Jones;" and, could I split myself into as many poets as there are muses, could find employment for them all.
Adieu, my dear friend.
I am ever yours,
W. C.