Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

POEMS

OF

VILLIAM COWPER, ESQ.;

WITH

A NEW MEMOIR.

COMPILED FROM JOHNSON, SOUTHEY AND
OTHER SOURCES.

Philadelphia:
URIAH HUNT & SON,

44 North Fourth Street.

POEMS

OF

WILLIAM COWPER, ESQ.;

WITH

A NEW MEMOIR.

COMPILED FROM JOHNSON, SOUTHEY AND

OTHER SOURCES.

Philadelphia:
URIAH HUNT & SON,

44 North Fourth Street.

1846

PUBLIC LIBRARY

915737

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

[ocr errors]

1920

L

MEMOIR

OF

WILLIAM COWPER.

WILLIAM COWPER was born on the 15th of November, (old style,) 1731, in the Rectory of Great Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire. His father, the Rector of the parish, was John Cowper, D. D., son of Spencer Cowper, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and next brother to the first earl Cowper, Lord Chancellor. His mother, the daughter of Roger Donne, Esq., of Norfolk, was of noble, and remotely of royal descent. It is not, however, for her genealogy, but for being the mother of a great poet, that this lady will be remembered. She died at the age of thirtyfour, leaving of several children, only two sons. "I can

truly say," said Cowper, nearly fifty years after her death, "that not a week passes, (perhaps I might with equal veracity say a day,) in which I do not think of her; such was the impression her tenderness made upon me, though the opportunity she had for showing it was so short." At the time of her death, Cowper was but six years old; but young as he was, he felt his loss most poignantly, and has recorded his feelings on the occasion of her loss, in the most beautiful of his minor poems.

Soon after his mother's death, Cowper was sent to a boarding-school, where he suffered much from the cruelty of one of the elder boys. "Such was his savage treatment

« PredošláPokračovať »