LETTER CLI.
Georgetown, Feb. 16, 1817.
Sunday Morning.
Your letter, written this day week, reached me yesterday.
Indeed, all three of your last have arrived regularly on the
Saturday morning after their date—a reformation in the post-office
that was more desired than expected.
I almost envy you Orlando. I would, if it were not Johnny
Hoole's translation; although, at the age of ten, I devoured
that more eagerly than gingerbread. Oh! if Milton had translated
it, he might tell of
"All who, since, baptized or infidel
Jousted in Aspromont or Montalban,
Damasco, or Morocco, or Torbisond;
Or whom Bisserta sent from Afric shore,
When Charlemagne, with all his peerage, fell
By Fontarabia."
Let me advise you to
"Call up him, who left half told,
The story of Cambuscan bold."
I think you have never read Chaucer. Indeed, I have
sometimes blamed myself for not cultivating your imagination,
when you were young. It is a dangerous quality, however,
for the possessor. But if from my life were to be taken
the pleasure derived from that faculty, very little would remain.
Shakspeare, and Milton, and Chaucer, and Spenser,
and Plutarch, and the Arabian Night's Entertainments, and
Don Quixotte, and Gil Blas, and Tom Jones, and Gulliver,
and Robinson Crusoe, "and the tale of Troy divine," have
made up more than half of my wordly enjoyment. To these
ought to be added Ovid's Metamorphoses, Ariosto, Dryden,
Beaumont and Fletcher, Southern, Otway, Congreve, Pope's
Rape and Eloisa, Addison, Young, Thomson, Gay, Goldsmith,
Gray, Collins, Sheridan, Cowper, Byron, Æsop, La
Fontaine, Voltaire, (Charles XII., Mahomed, and Zaire;) Rousseau,
(Julie,) Schiller, Madame de Stael—but, above all,
Burke.
One of the first books I ever read was Voltaire's Charles
XII.; about the same time, 1780-1, I read the Spectator; and
used to steal away to the closet containing them. The letters
from his correspondents were my favourites. I read
Humphry Clinker, also; that is, Win's and Tabby's letters,
with great delight, for I could spell, at that age, pretty correctly.
Reynard, the fox, came next, I think; then Tales of
the Genii and Arabian Nights. This last, and Shakspeare,
were my idols. I had read them with Don Quixotte, Gil
Blas, Quintus Curtius, Plutarch, Pope's Homer, Robinson
Crusoe, Gulliver, Tom Jones, Orlando Furioso, and Thomson's
Seasons, before I was eleven years of age; also, Goldsmith's
Roman History, 2 vols. 8 vo., and an old history of
Braddock's war. When not eight years old, I used to sing
an old ballad of his defeat:—
"On the 6th day of July, in the year sixty-five,
At two in the evening, did our forces arrive;
When the French and the Indians in ambush did lay—
And there was great slaughter of our forces that day."
At about eleven, 1784-5, Percy's Reliques, and Chaucer,
became great favourites, and Chatterton, and Rowley. I then
read Young and Gay, &c.: Goldsmith I never saw until 1787.
Pray get my Germany from Mr. Hoge, or Mr. Lacy:
they have it.
I have scribbled at a great rate. Do thou likewise.
JOHN RANDOLPH.
Mr. T. B. Dudley.
I have been reading Lear these two days, and incline to
prefer it to all Shakspeare's plays. In that and Timon only,
it has been said, the bard was in earnest. Read both—the
first especially.
