his affectionate partiality towards me to appear, at the hazard of being censured for inordinate vanity.-To obviate such a censure, I will only say, that I have endeavoured to execute what I regard as a mournful duty, as if I were under the immediate and visible direction of the most pure, the most truly modest, and the most gracefully virtuous mind, that I had ever the happiness of knowing in the form of a manly friend. It is certainly my wish that these Volumes may obtain the entire approbation of the world, but it is infinitely more my desire and ambition to render them exactly such, as I think most likely to gratify the conscious spirit of Cowper himself, in a superior existence.-The person who recommended it to his female relation to continue her exemplary regard to the Poet by appearing as his biographer, advised her to relate the particulars of his Life in the form of Letters addressed to your Lordship.He cited, on the occasion, a striking passage from the Memoirs of Gibbon, in which that great historian pays a just and a splendid compliment to one of the early English poets, who, in the tenderness, and purity of his heart, and in the vivid powers of description, may be thought to resemble Cowper.-The passage I allude to is this:“The nobility of the Spencers has been illustrated and enriched by the To Joseph Hill, Esqr. To the same To the same Sept. 11, 1784 June 25, 1785 Letter ..... .... 37 38 39 The Publication of Cowper's second Volume, in 1785, leads to a renewal of his Correspondence with his Relation Lady Hesketh, 139-continuation of his Letters. 9, 1786 .... .... 48 .... 49 .... .... .... .... .... .... .... 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 To the same Cowper receives at Olney his Relation Lady Hesketh, 207-Extracts from his Letters to the Revd. Mr. Bull-Poem on Friendship, from 210 to 224 -Extract from the Revd. Mr. Newton's Memoirs of Cowper, 225-the Removal of Mrs. Unwin and Cowper from the Town of Olney, to the Village of Weston, 226-continuation of his Letters: To |