“Yours,
     W. C.
     M. U.”

In the next specimen we shall see the faculty of imparting interest to the most trivial incident by the way of telling it.  The incident in this case is one which also forms the subject of the little poem called The Colubriad.

  To THE REV.  WILLIAM UNWIN.

    “Aug. 3rd, 1782.

“MY DEAR FRIEND,—­Entertaining some hope that Mr. Newton’s next letter would furnish me with the means of satisfying your inquiry on the subject of Dr. Johnson’s opinion, I have till now delayed my answer to your last; but the information is not yet come, Mr. Newton having intermitted a week more than usual since his last writing.  When I receive it, favourable or not, it shall be communicated to you; but I am not very sanguine in my expectations from that quarter.  Very learned and very critical heads are hard to please.  He may perhaps treat me with levity for the sake of my subject and design, but the composition, I think, will hardly escape his censure.  Though all doctors may not be of the same mind, there is one doctor at least, whom I have lately discovered, my professed admirer.  He too, like Johnson, was with difficulty persuaded to read, having an aversion to all poetry, except the Night Thoughts; which, on a certain occasion, when being confined on board a ship he had no other employment, he got by heart.  He was, however, prevailed upon, and read me several times over; so that if my volume had sailed with him, instead of Dr. Young’s, I might perhaps have occupied that shelf in his memory which he then allotted to the Doctor; his name is Renny, and he lives at Newport Pagnel.

“It is a sort of paradox, but it is true:  we are never more in danger than when we think ourselves most secure, nor in reality more secure than when we seem to be most in danger.  Both sides of this apparent contradiction were lately verified in my experience.  Passing from the greenhouse to the barn, I saw three kittens (for we have so many in our retinue) looking with fixed attention at something, which lay on the threshold of a door, coiled up.  I took but little notice of them at first, but a loud hiss engaged me to attend more closely, when behold—­a viper! the largest I remember to have seen, rearing itself, darting its forked tongue, and ejaculating the afore-mentioned hiss at the nose of a kitten, almost in contact with his lips.  I ran into the hall for a hoe with a long handle, with which I intended to assail him, and returning in a few seconds missed him:  he was gone, and I feared had escaped me.  Still, however, the kitten sat watching immovably upon the same spot.  I concluded, therefore, that, sliding between the door and the threshold, he had found his way out of the garden into the yard.  I went round immediately, and there found him in close conversation with the old cat, whose curiosity being excited by so novel an appearance, inclined her to pat his head repeatedly