To Dr. James Cogswell, New York.
Weston-Underwood, near Olney, Bucks,
June 15, 1791.
Dear Sir,—Your letter and obliging present from so great a distance deserved a speedier acknowledgment, and should not have wanted one so long, had not circumstances so fallen out since I received them as to make it impossible for me to write sooner. It is indeed within this day or two that I have heard how, by the help of my bookseller, I may transmit an answer to you.
My title-page, as it well might, misled you. It speaks me of the Inner Temple; and so I am, but a member of that society only, not as an inhabitant. I live here almost at the distance of sixty miles from London, which I have not visited these eight-and-twenty years, and probably never shall again. Thus it fell out that Mr. Morewood had sailed again for America before your parcel reached me, nor should I (it is likely) have received it at all, had not a cousin of mine, who lives in the Temple, by good fortune received it first, and opened your letter; finding for whom it was intended, he transmitted to me both that and the parcel. Your testimony of approbation of what I have published, coming from another quarter of the globe, could not but be extremely flattering, as was your obliging notice that "The Task" had been reprinted in your city. Both volumes, I hope, have a tendency to discountenance vice, and promote the best interests of mankind. But how far they shall be effectual to these invaluable purposes depends altogether on His blessing, whose truths I have endeavoured to inculcate. In the meantime I have sufficient proof, that readers may be pleased, may approve, and yet lay down the book unedified.
During the last five years I have been occupied with a work of a very different nature, a translation of the Iliad and Odyssey into blank verse, and the work is now ready for publication. I undertook it, partly because Pope's is too lax a version, which has lately occasioned the learned of this country to call aloud for a new one; and partly because I could fall on no better expedient to amuse a mind too much addicted to melancholy.
I send you, in return for the volumes with which you favoured me, three on religious subjects, popular productions that have not been long published, and that may not therefore yet have reached your country: "The Christian Officer's Panoply, by a marine officer"—"The Importance of the Manners of the Great," and "An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World." The two last are said to be written by a lady, Miss Hannah More, and are universally read by people of that rank to which she addresses them. Your manners, I suppose, may be more pure than ours, yet it is not unlikely that even among you may be found some to whom her strictures are applicable. I return you my thanks, sir, for the volumes you sent me, two of which I have read with pleasure, Mr. Edwards's[595] book, and the Conquest of Canaan. The rest I have not had time to read, except Dr. Dwight's Sermon, which pleased me almost more than any that I have either seen or heard.
I shall account a correspondence with you an honour, and remain, dear sir,
Your obliged and obedient servant,
W. C.