To William Hayley, Esq.
Weston, July 27, 1793.
I have been vexed with myself, my dearest brother, and with every thing about me, not excepting even Homer himself, that I have been obliged so long to delay an answer to your last kind letter. If I listen any longer to calls another way, I shall hardly be able to tell you how happy we are in the hope of seeing you in the autumn, before the autumn will have arrived. Thrice welcome will you and your dear boy be to us, and the longer you will afford us your company, the more welcome. I have set up the head of Homer on a famous fine pedestal, and a very majestic appearance he makes. I am now puzzled about a motto, and wish you to decide for me between two, one of which I have composed myself, a Greek one, as follows;
Εικονατις ταυτην; κλυτον ανερος ουνομ' ολωλεν.
Ουνομα δ'ουτος ανηρ αφθιτον αιεν εχει.
The other is my own translation of a passage in the Odyssey, the original of which I have seen used as a motto to an engraved head of Homer many a time.
The present edition of the lines stands thus,
Him partially the muse
And dearly loved, yet gave him good and ill:
She quenched his sight, but gave him strains divine
Tell me, by the way, (if you ever had any speculations on the subject,) what is it you suppose Homer to have meant in particular, when he ascribed his blindness to the muse, for that he speaks of himself under the name of Demodocus, in the eighth book, I believe is by all admitted. How could the old bard study himself blind, when books were either so few or none at all? And did he write his poems? If neither were the cause, as seems reasonable to imagine, how could he incur his blindness by such means as could be justly imputable to the muse? Would mere thinking blind him? I want to know:
"Call up some spirit from the vasty deep!"
I said to my Sam[713] ——, "Sam, build me a shed in the garden, with any thing that you can find, and make it rude and rough, like one of those at Eartham."——"Yes, Sir," says Sam, and straightway laying his own noddle, and the carpenter's noddle together, has built me a thing fit for Stow Gardens. Is not this vexatious?——I threaten to inscribe it thus:
Beware of building? I intended
Rough logs and thatch, and thus it ended.
But my Mary says, I shall break Sam's heart and the carpenter's too, and will not consent to it. Poor Mary sleeps but ill. How have you lived who cannot bear a sun-beam?
Adieu!
My dearest Hayley,
W. C.
The following seasonable and edifying letter, addressed by Cowper to his beloved kinsman, on the occasion of his ordination, will be read with interest.