To Lady Hesketh.
The Lodge, Feb. 9, 1790.
I have sent you lately scraps instead of letters, having had occasion to answer immediately on the receipt, which always happens while I am deep in Homer.
I knew when I recommended Johnson to you, that you would find some way to serve him, and so it has happened; for, notwithstanding your own apprehensions to the contrary, you have already procured him a chaplainship:[515] this is pretty well, considering that it is an early day, and that you have but just begun to know that there is such a man under heaven. I had rather myself be patronized by a person of small interest, with a heart like yours, than by the Chancellor himself, if he did not care a farthing for me.
If I did not desire you to make my acknowledgements to Anonymous, as I believe I did not, it was because I am not aware that I am warranted to do so. But the omission is of less consequence, because, whoever he is, though he has no objection to doing the kindest things, he seems to have an aversion to the thanks they merit.
You must know that two odes composed by Horace have lately been discovered at Rome.[516] I wanted them transcribed into the blank leaves of a little Horace of mine, and Mrs. Throckmorton performed that service for me; in a blank leaf, therefore, of the same book, I wrote the following:—
To Mrs. Throckmorton,
On her beautiful Transcript of Horace's Ode,
Ad Librum Suum.
Maria, could Horace have guess'd
What honours awaited his ode,
To his own little volume address'd,
The honour which you have bestow'd,
Who have traced it in characters here,
So elegant, even, and neat;
He had laugh'd at the critical sneer,
Which he seems to have trembled to meet.
And sneer, if you please, he had said,
Hereafter a nymph shall arise,
Who shall give me, when you are all dead,
The glory your malice denies,
Shall dignity give to my lay,
Although but a mere bagatelle;
And even a poet shall say,
Nothing ever was written so well.