your sleep be as sound as your bed will be sumptuous, and your nights at least will be well provided for. I shall send up the sixth and seventh books of the Iliad shortly, and shall address them to you. You will forward them to the General. I long to show you my workshop, and to see you sitting on the opposite side of my table. We shall be as close packed as two wax figures in an old-fashioned picture frame. I am writing in it now. It is the place in which I fabricate all my verse in summer time. I rose an hour sooner than usual this morning, that I might finish my sheet before breakfast, for I must write this day to the General. The grass under my windows is all bespangled with dewdrops, and the birds are singing in the apple trees, among the blossoms. Never poet had a more commodious oratory in which to invoke his Muse. TRANSLATION OF HOMER-THE NONSENSE CLUB. To JOSEPH HILL, ESQ. OLNEY, June 9, 1786. My dear friend, The little time that I can devote to any other purpose than that of poetry is, as you may suppose, stolen. Homer is urgent. Much is done, but much remains undone, and no schoolboy is more attentive to the performance of his daily task than I am. You will therefore excuse me if at present I am both unfrequent and short. I had a letter some time since from your sister Fanny, that gave me great pleasure. Such notices from old friends are always pleasant, and of such pleasures I have received many lately. They refresh the remeinbrance of early days, and make me young again. The noble institution of the Nonsense Club will be turgotten, when we are gone who composed it; but I often think of your most heroic line, written at one of our meetings, and espe cially think of it when I am translating Homer, "To whom replied the Devil yard-long-tailed."1 There never was any thing more truly Grecian than that triple epithet, and were it possible to introduce it into either Iliad or Odyssey, I should certainly steal it. I am now flushed with ex pectation of Lady Hesketh, who spends the summer with us. We hope to see her next week. We have found admirable lodgings both for her and her suite, and a Quaker in this town, still more admirable than they, who, as if he loved her as much as I do, furnishes them for her with real elegance. 1 Bee page 70 under "Moral Plays." ON A PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE.1 How mysterious are the ways of Providence! Why did I receive grace and mercy? Why was I preserved, afflicted for my good, received, as I trust, into favor, and blessed with the greatest happiness I can ever know or hope for in this life, while others were overtaken by the great arrest, unawakened, unrepent ing, and every way unprepared for it? His infinite wisdom, to whose infinite mercy I owe it all, can solve these questions, and none beside him. If I am convinced that no affliction can befall me without the permission of God, I am convinced, likewise, that he sees and knows that I am afflicted. Believing this, I must in the same degree believe that, if I pray to him for deliverance, he hears me; I must needs know likewise with equal assurance that, if he hears, he will also deliver me, if that will, upon the whole, be most conducive to my happiness; and if he does not deliver me, I may be well assured that he has none but the most benevolent intention in declining it. He made us, not because we could add to his happiness, which was always perfect, but that we might be happy ourselves; and will he not, in all his dispensations towards us, even in the minutest, consult that end for which he made us? To suppose the contrary, is (which we are not always aware of) affronting every one of his attributes; and at the same time the certain consequence of disbelieving his care for us is, that we renounce utterly our dependence upon him. In this view, it will appear plainly that the line of duty is not stretched too tight, when we are told that we ought to accept every thing at his hands as a blessing, and to be thankful even while we smart under the rod of iron with which he sometimes rules us. Without this persuasion, every blessing, however we may think ourselves happy in it, loses its greatest recommendation, and every afiction is intolerable. Death itself must be welcome to him who has this faith, and he who has it not, must aim at it, if he ia not a madman. 1 From a letter to Lady Hesketh, dated Sept. 4, 1765. INDEX TO SUBJECTS, AND TO NAMES INCIDENTALLY MENTIONED IN THE VOLUME. [FOR THE AUTHORS IN THE WORK, SEE ALPHABETICAL LIST, IN THE SEVENTH PAGE! PAGE 252 Abstinence, in Samson Agonistes.......... 268 All-Sufficiency of the Scriptures, by Wi- 609 222 567 122 23 Alps, Scenery of the, by Goldsmith........ 631 257 222 687 Anecdote of Queen Elizabeth... Angels, Care of, over Men, by Spenser... 102 -on Steele's Dream 404 Blaize, Mrs. Mary, An Elegy on............. 626 Blindness, Sonnet of Milton on his own.. 259 Note on the Controversy of 495 Burns, Lines on Nature, by....... 221 328 737 523 80 Britain, by Goldsmith........................... 624 527 333 Cato, Tragedy of, Warton on.................. 376 Chesterfield, Johnson on...... Chevy-Chase........ 43 649 649 112 Child, Epitaph upon a, by Herrick... Letter to his, by Hale........ 275 Penn's advice to his............... 372 Chorus of the Birds, by Drayton............ 169 507 Christians, Preachers, by Leighton........ 311 on Chaucer.. On Education............................ on Happiness, Duty, Faith Collins, Ode on Fear by, Note to 517 687 Hymn to, by Parnell......... 368 by Taylor..... 167 Christ. Ode to the Nativity of, by Mil- 364 ten. 241 Cowley and Chancer, by I-yden. 853 |