theirs. So far is good. Let every man act according to his own judgment and conscience; but if we condemn another for not seeing with our eyes, we are unreasonable; and if we reproach him on that account, we are uncharitable, which is a still greater evil.

I had heard, before I received the favour of yours, that such a report of me, as you mention, had spread about the country. But my information told me that it was founded thus-The people of Olney petitioned parliament for the abolitionMy name was sought among the subscribers, but was not found. A question was asked, how that happened? Answer was made, that I had once indeed been an enemy to the slave trade, but had changed my mind, for that, having lately read a history, or an account of Africa, I had seen it there asserted, that till the commencement of that traffic, the negroes, multiplying at a prodigious rate, were necessitated to devour each other; for which reason I had judged it better that the trade should continue, than that they should be again reduced to so horrid a custom.

Now all this is a fable. I have read no such history; I never in my life read any such assertion; nor, had such an assertion presented itself to me, should I have drawn any such conclusion from it. On the contrary, bad as it were, I think it would be better the negroes should even eat one another, than that we should carry them to market. The single reason why I did not sign the petition was, because I was never asked to do it; and the

reason why I was never asked was, because I am

not a parishioner of Olney.

Thus stands the matter.

You will do me the

justice, I dare say, to speak of me as of a man who abhors the commerce, which is now, I hope, in a fair way to be abolished, as often as you shall find occasion. And I beg you henceforth to do yourself the justice to believe it impossible that I should, for a moment, suspect you of duplicity or misrepresentation. I have been grossly slandered, but neither by you, nor in consequence of any thing that you have either said or written. I remain, therefore, still, as heretofore, with great respect, much and truly yours,

Mrs. Unwin's compliments attend you.

W. C.

Cowper, on this occasion, addressed the following letter to the Editors of the Northampton Mercury, enclosing the verses on Mr. Wilberforce, which were inserted at the close of the last volume.

TO THE PRINTERS OF THE NORTHAMPTON MERCURY.

Weston Underwood, April 16, 1792.

Sirs-Having lately learned that it is pretty generally reported, both in your county and in this, that my present opinion, concerning the slave trade, differs totally from that which I have heretofore given to the public, and that I am no longer an enemy but a friend to that horrid traffic; I entreat you to take an early opportunity to insert in your

Paper the following lines,* written no longer since than this very morning, expressly for the two purposes of doing just honour to the gentleman with whose name they are inscribed, and of vindicating myself from an aspersion so injurious.

I am, &c.,

W. Cowper.

The last two lines in the sonnet, addressed to Mr. Wilberforce, were originally thus expressed:

Then let them scoff-two prizes thou hast won;
Freedom for captives, and thy God's—Well done.

These were subsequently altered as follows:

Enjoy what thou hast won, esteem and love
From all the just on earth and all the blest above.

Cowper's version of Homer, which has formed so frequent a subject in the preceding volume, led to a public discussion, in which the interests of literature and the success of his own undertaking were deeply concerned. The question agitated was the relative merits of rhyme and blank verse, in undertaking a translation of that great poet. Johnson, the great dictator in the republic of letters, in his predilection for rhyme, had almost proscribed the use of blank verse in poetical composition. "Poetry," he observes, in his life of Milton, "may subsist without rhyme; but English poetry will not please, See Vol. iv. p. 353.

nor can rhyme ever be safely spared, but where the subject is able to support itself. Blank verse makes some approach to that which is called the lapidary style; has neither the easiness of prose, nor the melody of numbers; and therefore tires by long continuance. Of the Italian writers without rhyme, whom Milton alleges as precedents, not one is popular. What reason could urge in its defence, has been confuted by the ear."

Johnson however makes an exception, in the instance of Milton.

"But, whatever be the advantages of rhyme," he adds, "I cannot prevail on myself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer; for I cannot wish his work to be other than it is; yet, like other heroes, he is to be admired rather than imitated. He that thinks himself capable of astonishing, may write blank verse; but those that hope only to please must condescend to rhyme."

In his critique on the "Night Thoughts," he makes a similar concession. "This is one of the few poems in which blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage. The wild diffusion of the sentiments, and the digressive sallies of imagination, would have been compressed and restrained by confinement to rhyme."*

Cowper, it will be remembered, questions the

* Young's testimony in favour of blank verse is thus forcibly, though rather pompously, expressed :

"Blank verse is verse unfallen, uncursed; verse reclaimed, re-enthroned in the true language of the Gods."

See Conjectures on Original Composition.

correctness of Johnson's taste on this subject, and vindicates the force and majesty of blank verse with much weight of argument. With respect,

however, to the important question, how a translation of Homer might be best executed, his sentiments are delivered so much at large in the admirable preface to his version of the Iliad, that we shall lay a few extracts from it before the reader.

66

"Whether a translation of Homer," he remarks, may be best executed in blank verse or in rhyme, is a question in the decision of which no man can find difficulty, who has ever duly considered what translation ought to be, or who is in any degree practically acquainted with those very different kinds of versification. I will venture to assert, that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense, of his original. The translator's ingenuity, indeed, in this case becomes itself a snare; and the readier he is at invention and expedient, the more likely he is to be betrayed into the widest departures from the guide whom he professes to follow."

It was this acknowledged defect in Pope, that led Cowper to engage in his laborious undertaking of producing a new version.

We admire the candour with which he appreciates the merits of Pope's translation, and yet we cannot refuse to admit the justness of his strictures.