Читать книгу The Collected Works - William Cowper - Страница 105

Table of Contents

Olney, Sept. 3, 1780.

My dear Friend—I am glad you are so provident, and that, while you are young, you have furnished yourself with the means of comfort in old age. Your crutch and your pipe may be of use to you, (and may they be so!) should your years be extended to an antediluvian date; and, for your perfect accommodation, you seem to want nothing but a clerk called Snuffle, and a sexton of the name of Skeleton, to make your ministerial equipage complete.

I think I have read as much of the first volume of the Biographia as I shall ever read. I find it very amusing; more so, perhaps, than it would have been, had they sifted their characters with more exactness, and admitted none but those who had in some way or other entitled themselves to immortality by deserving well of the public. Such a compilation would perhaps have been more judicious, though I confess it would have afforded less variety. The priests and monks of earlier and the doctors of later days, who have signalized themselves by nothing but a controversial pamphlet, long since thrown by and never to be perused again, might have been forgotten, without injury or loss to the national character for learning or genius. This observation suggested to me the following lines, which may serve to illustrate my meaning, and at the same time to give my criticism a sprightlier air.

O fond attempt to give a deathless lot

To names ignoble, born to be forgot!

In vain recorded in historic page,

They court the notice of a future age;

Those twinkling, tiny lustres of the land,

Drop one by one, from Fame's neglecting hand;

Lethean gulphs receive them as they fall,

And dark Oblivion soon absorbs them all.

So, when a child (as playful children use)

Has burnt to cinder a stale last year's news,

The flame extinct, he views the roving fire,

There goes my lady, and there goes the 'squire,

There goes the parson—O illustrious spark!

And there—scarce less illustrious—goes the clerk!

Virgil admits none but worthies into the Elysian fields; I cannot recollect the lines in which he describes them all, but these in particular I well remember:

Quique sui memores alios fecere merendo,

Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes.

A chaste and scrupulous conduct like this would well become the writer of national biography. But enough of this.

Our respects attend Miss Shuttleworth, with many thanks for her intended present. Some purses derive all their value from their contents, but these will have an intrinsic value of their own; and, though mine should be often empty, which is not an improbable supposition, I shall still esteem it highly on its own account.

If you could meet with a second-hand Virgil, ditto Homer, both Iliad and Odyssey, together with a Clavis, for I have no Lexicon, and all tolerably cheap, I shall be obliged to you if you will make the purchase.

Yours,

W. C.

The three following letters are interesting, as containing Cowper's sentiments on the subject of education.