But this cannot be mended; at least, I do not see how, as it goes through the whole texture. It must even be let alone. I am not certain that I had a correct idea of what is meant by the Omnipotence of Truth; nor whether it is right to confound truth with conviction or persuasion, in the manner I have done. I do not see that more religious references ought to have appeared in the essay on Decision, &c., as the object was merely to illustrate the general principles of this decision, as applicable to religious pursuits, or any other indifferently, and not to dwell, except very briefly, on any specific form of the operation of these principles. And besides, I think the volumes have quite a competent measure, on the whole, of what belongs to religion; such a measure, that any considerable addition would have given the appearance of a specifically religious book, which would not have been the best policy, either for usefulness or literary success. I am glad of Wilberforce's approbation.

. . I shall reckon on seeing you both in Bristol and here; and if it really will be of any use for me to visit London, I should prefer returning with you from the west. To do it just now, would seem as if I were very eager to get a little flattery, which I really am not, and which there is no need for me to appear to want.

It is probable, that what I recollect to have said some time since about the continuance of my preaching, appeared to you only a casual or exaggerated expression; and I have felt little inclined to repeat the simple and absolute fact, that I shall not be able to preach any great while longer; this is now become more certain than when I first said it. It is no matter of apprehension, but a thing entirely decided. . . . . It is not my throa! now that causes me any inconvenience; that has been perfectly well a long time; the complaint is a formidable swelling of the gland that passes across the front of the neck, which cannot be reduced, and which in this enlarged state presses with a weight and constriction on the moving parts that are constantly in action in speaking; and the effort is at once very uneasy, sometimes quite painful, and causes a continual increase of the evil. Even talking a great deal for several hours in company becomes very oppressive, as well as injurious; and I look forward with dread mingling with pleasure to the whole days which I may spend with you some time hence. Lately I spent almost a whole day with Sibree, Williams of Westbury, and another of the fraternity ; and though much pleased with the company, the evening became extremely oppressive from this physical cause, and the escape into silence by our separation was an exquisite luxury. I am probably destined. through the whole of life, to be under the necessity of restraining the copiousness of expression, even in the easy talk of domestic society. A grand advantage which I promise myself from this is, to acquire, from necessity, the art of putting more thought in fewer words—an inestimable art, for a writer especially. My regret for the preclusion from the possible utility of preaching is considerably consoled by the hope, that I may be able to render much greater services to the best Master, and the

best cause, by writing. Viewed in regard to my personal interests, this is a melancholy dispensation. . . . . I cannot see any reason for your relinquishment of literary purposes. With the amendment so often noted already, you will write vigorously and elegantly. We must both endeavor to do something that will speak a little while, at least, after we are finally silent. Keep yourself in the exercise, with a particular reference to the points where modification is desirable.

LIX. TO MRS. R. MANT.

Frome, November 22, 1805

During the summer, I several times intended to have written again; but really I was not born under the writing planets, whichever they may be. It occurred to me sometimes, that it was but too probable you were again suffering that severe head-ache which has before so much lessened to you the value of the delightful season, delightful to a person in health. Yet, as I do not remember to have ever known a summer with so little oppressive heat, I am willing to persuade myself that you have not suffered quite so much as in former seasons. If you did not, you would be delighted with the extraordinary beauty which prevailed throughout the entire season; there was never a parching and scorching interval; the verdure never died, nor hardly even languished. I never have been more enchanted with a summer, since I left whatever part of creation or chaos I lived in, in former ages, and came to this our green orb. I took frequent solitary walks; even as matter of duty I did it sometimes, when the attraction of pleasure might have failed to overcome my great indisposition to move. Those walks were commonly in the retired fields and woody lanes, of which I found a number this last summer in this neighborhood, some of them very beautiful, as well as extremely quiet. There are, besides, two or three extremely beautiful valleys not far from this town. As to the town itself, I do not know whether I told you how much I nauseate it; but no length of time would ever cure my loathing of it. But sweet Nature! I have conversed with her with inexpressible luxury; I have almost worshipped her. A flower, a tree, a bird, a fly, has been enough to kindle a delightful train of ideas and emotions, and sometimes to elevate the mind to sublime conceptions. When the autumn stole on I observed it with the most vigilant attention, and felt a pensive regret to see those forms of beauty, which tell that all the beauty is going soon to depart. One autumnal flower (the white convolvulus) .. excited very great interest, by recalling the season I spent at Chichester, where I happened to be very attentive to this flower, and once or twice, if you recollect, endeavored to draw it with the pencil. I have at this moment the most lively image of my doing this, and of the delight I used to feel in looking at this beautiful flower in the hedges of those paths and fields with which both you and I are so well acquainted

Yes, I am well acquainted, though it is now beginning to be long since my wanderings and musings there; yet I could most promptly find each field, each path, each gate, each corner, each stile. I could tell where I formed plans, indulged pensive regrets for the waste of past life, made pious resolutions, or let my fancy run into visionary reveries. All this is out of your house; I need not say how well I recollect the circumstances, conversations, readings, &c., which took place in the house. I shall always be partial to the recollection of that house; to the pictures which gave a kind of life to the walls; to the pretty vine which crept in at my window; and all this chiefly for the sake of the inhabitant-who, I conclude, is the inhabitant still, though I have left it so long. While she continues in it, may the greatest Being in the universe continually visit her there. I am well assured she will crave his society, and I know, too, that he loves to receive and accept such invitations.

LX. TO D. PARKEN, ESQ.*

*

Frome, November 20, 1806.

DEAR SIR,-Your letter seems to require to be answered some time, and the present may be as proper a time as any other. The writer of an article in a Review is apprised, of course, of the conditions under which he writes it. He knows that the editor is responsible for the whole publication, and that he must necessarily be the judge and arbiter of both the whole and the parts of every piece that is supplied and submitted to him. The writer, therefore, surrenders it at discretion, to be modified as the occasion requires, and abandons it to its chance without taking any further interest or care about it as his own. This is no doubt one as I have seen some writer observe, that few pieces, comparatively, of good writing, will be likely to appear in reviews, since the writer will seldom make much effort about what is merely to serve its temporary purpose, and be no further an object of his care after he has sent it out of his hands. This, however, is the condition under which he writes, and his business is to keep himself perfectly indifferent in what manner his pages may be put in print. All this I knew, and therefore need not disavow the remotest wish to interfere in any way with the province and authority of the editor. After the piece is printed, and indeed after these few lines, I shall not make the smallest remark or complaint.

cause,

As you have made some remarks and exceptions, however, I will here say a few words in the person of the writer of the piece.

And, in the outset, I do not believe there is one sentence too much in the spirit of censure or satire. It may be all very true about Sir William's good qualities among his friends, but here he comes forth before the

* In reference to Mr. Foster's critique on Forbes's Life of Beattie, inserted in the Eclectic Review for January and February, 1807, "Contributions," &c., vol. I., p. 19-36.

public with a great book. In the first place, this book is quite unnecessary, as there was a fully long enough account of Dr. Beattie before published; and if it had been necessary, it is far too big for the subject, unless, as I have said, all proportion and modesty, as to the extent of record claimed by individuals, are to be set at defiance. This is, besides, becoming a custom, and Hayley has played the penny and book-making game with a vengeance. This book is eked out with very many very insignificant letters, with leaf after leaf of fac-similes, with analyses of books, with long stories about the union of colleges, and with an immense quantity of miscellaneous heraldic biography and genealogy. In the next place, unless all the rules by which we judge of men in their conversation are to be reversed, when we are to judge of so much of their characters as they voluntarily choose to display in their books, there never was a greater excess of ostentation on the part of the author than in this book. It is impossible not to know what judgment we should form, as to this point, of a man who, alluding in the course of his conversation to many distinguished personages, should always take care to let us know that these persons were his old familiar acquaintance, when there was no other use in the information, and no need to give it. It appears evident ́o me, that not a few of these short pieces of biography and genealogy were introduced for the very purpose of telling, that the author was acquainted with one distinguished personage more: and if this is not the case, and all this is done in sheer simplicity, the reviewer cannot be exculpated for letting go, without castigation, an instance of such weakness as would be made a precedent of unbounded ostentation and egotism. Sir W. takes care to tell, that much stronger things in the way of compliment were in Dr. Beattie's letters to him, but that he has left them out, and this is said to apologize for those strong things which are retained. Why, in the name of decency, were they not both omitted? Or, if this could not be done without actually destroying the texture of the letters, why were the letters printed at all? Who wanted the letters, or can be benefited by them? And besides, unless he had intimated that the emolument from the book would, at least in part, be applied to some other than personal use, does not the whole affair look like his raising money by showing strangers the monument of his friend?

Again; the correspondence is most obviously crammed with excess of praise and mutual flattery: here my eye glances on your remark, that “everybody is made splenetic by everybody else's praise." This may be true enough, but what has it to do with the subject? The reviewer may be prompted by spleen, and half a dozen more such virtues, but this is nothing to the public; the question is only whether his allegation is just, that is, whether it is true; and surely the present case is out of all doubt. Are not the correspondents habitually larding and daubing one another with flattery from head to foot, and next, all their acquaintance? Is not every virtue, every accomplishment, and every talent almost, constantly attributed to each other, and all who were their friends; while at

the very same time we know that many of them were just no better than they should be? Even the late miserable archbishop is liberally bepraised, of whom I happen to know specific facts that prove him one of the meanest muckworms that ever crawled into a mitre. Sir W. describes James Boswell as a man of "fervent devotion!!!" These are his identical words, and I should have cited them in the critique, but because I thought it could not be done without requiring to be accompanied with some expression of such emphatical censure or contempt as would be absolute rudeness. They all join with one consent in the profoundest sorrow, on account of the profane and frivolous Garrick, who was, however, one of the best of human beings. As to the lavish excesses of encomium on Dr. B. and his writings, let it be recollected, that there were many contemporary writers of even greater fame; and that they, it is to be presumed, had also their friends, who wrote to them and of them in the very same style. Now only imagine that the correspondence of and concerning each of them were to be published, after this edifying example, what is to become of us then, or of modesty, decency, or sense? What a nauseous inundation of fulsome folly we should have to wade. swim, or drown in. And why should not this be done in every instance? There would be the same right. Now is a critic, because he is called. Eclectic, and is an excellent good Christian, to let all this pass as a display of the amiable feelings of friends for one another, as Sir W. would have it understood? Or is he even to praise it, as I dare say some of the Reviews have done, though I have not seen one of them? Or if he blames it, is he to do this in a dull quotation from Tillotson's Sermons, or in the feebleness of a few milk-and-water phrases? If friends choose to write in this style to and of one and another, let them; the critic is not bound to keep in his pay scoundrels, to rob the mails in order to come at their letters; but if these are all to be published, I think he is bound by every law of public decorum to indict the nuisance.

Then as to the royal conversation, as what, and for what, is it to be introduced? As a specimen of royal wisdom? or for an attempt to coax the public, by an overdone loyalty, to take in the review? This would seem much of a piece with the awkward and laborious loyalty by which the dissenters have of late years disgraced themselves in many of their publications. It however loses, as it deserves to lose, its reward. A spirited, independent, critical work may easily throw off this, without on the other hand dashing into faction. Can there be a more fair object of satire than that pomp and importance which a literary man assumes, and his friends for him, on account of his having talked with . . . . a king? It appears to me, quite time of the day to show that we are not to be gulled into admiration of his sublime fortune. It would be difficult to show this seriously without an air of faction; dry, calm satire, therefore, is the only resource. . . . .

On the whole, then, I am entirely of the opinion with which I began (and it is quite in character for any kind of writer to be of this opinion