And after many a vain essay
To captivate the tempting prey,
Gives him at length the lucky pat,
And has him safe, beneath his hat :
Then lifts it gently from the ground;
But ah! 'tis lost, as soon as found;
Culprit his liberty regains;

Flits out of sight, and mocks his pains.
The sense was dark; 'twas therefore fit

With simile t'illustrate it ;

But as too much obscures the sight,

As often as too little light,

We have our similies cut short,
For matters of more grave import.
That Matthew's numbers run with ease,
Each man of common sense agrees ;
All men of common sense allow,
That Robert's lines are easy too:
Where then the preference shall we place?
Or how do justice in this case?
Matthew (says Fame) with endless pains
Smooth'd, and refin'd, the meanest strains;
Nor suffer'd one ill chosen rhyme
T'escape him, at the idlest time;
And thus o'er all a lustre cast,

That, while the language lives, shall last.
An't please your Ladyship (quoth I)

For 'tis my business to reply;

Sure so much labour, so much toil,
Bespeak at least a stubborn soil:
Theirs be the laurel-wreath decreed,

Who both write well, and write full speed!

Who throw their Helicon about

As freely, as a conduit spout!

Friend Robert, thus like chien scavant,

Let's fall a poem en passant,

Nor needs his genuine ore refine;

'Tis ready polish'd from the mine.

It may be proper to observe, that this lively praise on the playful talent of Lloyd was written six years before that amiable, but unfortunate, Author published the best of his serious poems, "The Actor," a composition of considerable merit, which proved a prelude to the more powerful, and popular, Rosciad of Churchill; who, after surpassing Lloyd as a rival, assisted him very liberally as a friend. While Cowper resided in the Temple, he seems to have been personally acquainted with the most eminent writers of the time; and the interest, which he probably took in their recent works, tended to increase his powerful, tho' diffident, passion for poetry, and to train him imperceptibly to that masterly command of language, which time and chance led him to display, almost as a new talent at the age of fifty. One of his first associates has informed me, that before he quitted London, he frequently amused himself in translation from antient and modern poets, and devoted his

composition

composition to the service of any friend, who requested it. In a copy of Duncombe's Horace, printed in 1759, I find two of the Satires, translated by Cowper. The Duncombes, father and son, were amiable scholars, of a Hertfordshire family; and the elder Duncombe, in his printed letters, mentions Dr. Cowper (the father of the Poet) as one of his friends, who possessed a talent for poetry, exhibiting at the same time a respectable specimen of his verse. The Duncombes in the preface to their Horace, impute the size of their work to the poetical contributions of their friends. At what time the two Satires, I have mentioned, were translated by William Cowper, I have not been able to ascertain; but they are worthy his pen, and will therefore appear in the Appendix to these volumes.

Speaking of his own early life, in a letter to Mr. Park (dated March 1792) Cowper says, with that extreme modesty, which was one of his most remarkable characteristics, "From the age

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of

twenty to thirty-three, I was occupied, or ought to have been, " in the study of the law; from thirty-three to sixty, I have spent

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my time in the country, where my reading has been only an apology for idleness, and where, when I had not either a Magazine, or a Review, I was sometimes a Carpenter, at others, a Bird-cage maker, or a Gardener, or a Drawer of landscapes. At fifty years of age I commenced an Author :-It is a whim, that "has served me longest, and best, and will probably be my last."

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Lightly as this most modest of Poets has spoken of his own exertions, and late as he appeared to himself in producing his chief poetical works, he had received from nature a contemplative spirit, perpetually acquiring a store of mental treasure, which he at last unveiled, to delight and astonish the world with its unexpected magnificence. Even his juvenile verses discover a mind deeply impressed with sentiments of piety; and in proof of this assertion, I select a few stanzas from an Ode, written, when he was very young, on reading Sir Charles Grandison.

To rescue from the tyrant's sword
The oppress'd;---unseen, and unimplor'd,

To chear the face of woe;

From lawless insult to defend

An orphan's right---a fallen friend,
And a forgiven foe;

These, these, distinguish, from the croud,
And these alone, the great and good,
The guardians of mankind;

Whose bosoms with these virtues heave,
O, with what matchless speed, they leave!
The multitude behind!

Then ask ye from what cause on earth
Virtues like these derive their birth?

Derived from Heaven alone,

Full on that favor'd breast they shine,
Where Faith and Resignation join

To call the blessing down.

Such

Such is that heart :-But while the Muse
Thy theme, O Richardson, pursues,

Her feebler spirits faint:

She cannot reach, and would not wrong

That subject for an Angel's song,

The Hero, and the Saint.

His early turn to moralize, on the slightest occasion, will appear from the following Verses, which he wrote at the age of eighteen; and in which those, who love to trace the rise and progress of genius, will, I think, be pleased to remark the very promising seeds of those peculiar powers, which unfolded themselves in the richest maturity, at a distant period, and rendered that beautiful and sublime poem, The Task, the most instructive and interesting of modern compositions.

VERSES WRITTEN AT BATH, IN 1748, ON FINDING THE

HEEL OF A SHOE.

Fortune! I thank thee: gentle Goddess! thanks!
Not that my Muse, tho' bashful, shall deny,
She would have thank'd thee rather, hadst thou cast

A treasure in her way; for neither meed

Of early breakfast to dispell the fumes,
And bowel-racking pains of emptiness,

Nor noon-tide feast, nor evening's cool repast
Hopes she from this, presumptuous, tho' perhaps
The Cobler, leather-carving artist! might.

Nathless