The Correspondence of William Cowper (Volume 2); Arranged in Chronological Order - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1904 Excerpt: ... equal to the task.1 But he that can find no beauties in Virgil, and, which is worse, not a single instance of the sublime in Scripture, must either belie himself, or be, of all creatures that live, the most destitute of taste and sensibility. Adieu, my dear William! We are well, and you and yours are ever the objects of our affection. W. C. TO LADY HESKETH My Dearest Cousin,--I am glad that I always loved you as I did. It releases me from any occasion to suspect that my present affection for you is indebted for its existence to any selfish considerations. No, I am sure I love you disinterestedly, and for your own sake, because I never thought of you with any other sensations than those of the truest affection, even while I was under the influence of a persuasion that I should never hear from you again. But with my present feelings, superadded to those that I always had for you, I find it no easy matter to do justice to my sensations. I perceive myself in a state of mind similar to that of the traveller, described in Pope's Messiah, who, as he passes through a sandy desert, starts at the sudden and unexpected sound of a waterfall. You have placed me in a situation new to me, and in which I feel myself somewhat puzzled how I ought to behave. At the same time that I would not grieve you, by putting a check upon your bounty, I would be as careful not to abuse it as if I were a miser, and the question not about your money, but my own. 1 Cowper did, however, chastise him. He wrote the lines 'On the Author of Letters of Literature.' Although I do not suspect that a secret to you, my cousin, is any burden, yet having maturely considered that point, since I wrote my last, I feel myself altogether disposed to release you from the injunction to that effect under which...