Who neither knew, nor practis'd any art, And glad of an occasion to commend : Resign'd, when Heav'n demanded back her breath, Whoe'er thou art, that dost this tomb draw near, O stay awhile, and shed a friendly tear; These lines, though weak, are, as herself, sincere. The truth and tenderness of this epitaph will more than compensate with every candid reader the imperfection ascribed to it by its young and modest author.-To have lost a parent of a character so virtuous and endearing, at an early period of his childhood, was the prime misfortune of Cowper, and what contributed perhaps in the highest degree to the dark colouring of his subsequent life. The influence of a good mother on the first years of her children, whether nature has given them peculiar strength or peculiar delicacy of frame, is equally inestimable: it is the prerogative and the felicity of such a mother to temper the arrogance of the strong, and to dissipate the timidity of the tender. The infancy of Cowper was delicate in no common degree; and his constitution discovered at a very early season that morbid tendency to diffidence, melancholy, and despair, which darkened as he advanced in years, into periodical fits of the most deplorable depression. It may afford an ample field for useful reflection, to observe, in speaking of a child, that he was destined to excite, in his progress through life, the highest degrees of admiration and of pity-of admiration for mental excellence, and of pity for mental disorder. We understand human nature too imperfectly to ascertain in what measure the original structure of his frame, and the casual incidents of his life, contributed to the happy perfection of his genius, or to the calamitous eclipses of his effulgent mind. Yet such were the talents, the virtues, and the misfortunes of this wonderful person, that it is hardly possible for biography, extensive as her province is, to speak of a more interesting individual, or to select a subject on which it may be more difficult to satisfy a variety of readers. In feeling all the weight of this difficulty, I may still be confident that I shall not utterly disappoint his sincerest admirers, if the success of my endeavours to make him more known and more beloved, is proportioned in any degree to the zeal with which I cultivated his friendship, and to the gratification that I feel in recalling to my own recollection the delightful extent and diversity of his literary powers, with the equally delightful sweetness of his social character. But the powerful influence of such recollection has drawn me imperceptibly from the proper course of my narrative—I return to the childhood of Cowper. In first quitting the house of his parents, he was sent to a reputable school at Market-street, in Hertfordshire, under the care of Dr. Pitman; and it is probable that he was removed from it in consequence of an ocular complaint. From a circumstance which he relates of himself at that period, in a letter written to me in 1792, he seems to have been in danger of resembling Milton in the misfortune of blindness, as he resembled him, more happily, in the fervency of a devout and poetical spirit. "I have been all my life," says Cowper, "subject to inflammations of the eye, and, in my boyish days, had specks on both, that threatened to cover them. My father, alarmed for the consequences, sent me to a female oculist of great renown at that time, in whose house I abode two years, but to no good purpose. From her I went to Westminster-school, where, at the age of fourteen, the small-pox seized me, and proved the better oculist of the two, for it delivered me from them all; not, however, from great liableness to inflammation, to which I am in a degree still subject, though much less than formerly, since I have been constant in the use of a hot foot-bath every night, the last thing before going to rest." It appears a strange process in education, to send a tender child, from a long residence in the house of a female oculist, immediately into all the hardships that a little delicate boy must have to encounter at a public school. But the mother of Cowper was dead, and fathers, though good men, are, in general, utterly unfit to manage their young and tender orphans. The little Cowper was sent to his first school in the year of his mother's death; and how ill suited the scene was to his peculiar character, must be evident to all who have heard him describe his sensations in that season of life, which is often very erroneously extolled as the happiest period of human existence. He has been frequently heard to lament the persecution he sustained in his childish years, from the cruelty of his school-fellows, in the two scenes of his education. His own forcible expression represented him at Westminster as not daring to raise his eye above the shoe-buckle of the elder boys, who were too apt to tyrannize over his gentle spirit. The acuteness of his feelings in his childhood rendered those important years (which might have produced, under tender cultivation, a series of lively enjoyments) miserable years of increasing timidity and depression; which in the most cheerful hours of his advanced life, he could hardly describe to an intimate friend, without shuddering at the recollection of his early wretchedness. Yet to this perhaps the world is indebted for the pathetic and moral eloquence of those forcible admonitions to parents, which give interest and beauty to his admirable poem on public schools. Poets may be said to realize, in some measure, the poetical idea of the nightin gale's singing with a thorn at her breast; as their most exquisite songs have often originated in the acuteness of their personal sufferings. Of this obvious truth the poem I have just mentioned is a very memorable example; and if any readers have thought the poet too severe in his strictures on that system of education to which we owe some of the most accomplished characters that ever gave celebrity to a civilized nation, such readers will be candidly reconciled to that moral severity of reproof, in recollecting that it flowed from severe personal experience, united to the purest spirit of philanthropy and patriotism. Cowper's exhortation to fathers to educate their own sons, is a model of persuasive eloquence, and not inferior to similar exhortations in the eloquent Rousseau, or in the accomplished translator of Tansillo's poem, 'The Nurse;' by which these enchanting writers have induced, and will continue to induce, so many mothers in polished life to suckle their own children. Yet similar as these exhortations may be esteemed, in their benevolent design and in their graceful expression, there are two powerful reasons which must in all probability prevent their being attended with similar success. In the first place, woman has, in general, much stronger propensity than man to the perfect discharge of parental duties; and secondly, the avocations of men are so imperious in their different lines of life, that few fathers could command sufficient leisure (if nature furnished them with talents and inclination) to fulfil the arduous office of preceptor to their own children; yet arduous and irksome as the office is generally thought, there is perhaps no species of mental labour so perfectly sweet in its success; and the poet justly exclaims: O! 'tis a sight to be with joy perus'd, A sight surpass'd by none, that we can show! A father blest with an ingenuous son, Had the constitutional shyness and timidity of Cowper been gradually dispelled by the rare advantages that he describes in these verses, his early years would certainly have been happier but men who are partial to public schools, will probably doubt, if any system of private tuition could have proved more favourable to the future display of his genius, than such an education as he received at Westminster. There, indeed, the peculiar delicacy of his nature might expose him to an extraordinary portion of juvenile discomfort; yet he undoubtedly acquired the accomplishment, and the reputation of scholarship; with the advantage of being known and esteemed by some aspiring youths of his own age, who were destined to become conspicuous and powerful in the splendid scenes of the world. With these acquisitions, he left Westminster at the age of eighteen, in 1749; and as if destiny had determined, that all his early situations in life should be peculiarly irksome to his delicate feelings, and tend rather to promote than to counteract his constitutional tendency to melancholy, he was removed from a public school to the office of an attorney. He resided three years in the house of a Mr. Chapman, to whom he was engaged by articles for that time. Here he was placed for the study of a profession which nature seemed resolved that he never should practise. The law is a kind of soldiership, and like the profession of arms, it may be said to require for the constitution of its heroes A frame of adamant, a soul of fire. The soul of Cowper had indeed its fire, but fire so refined and ethereal, that it could not be expected to shine in the gross atmosphere of worldly contention. Perhaps there never existed a mortal, who possessing with a good person, intellectual powers naturally strong and highly cultivated, was so utterly unfit to encounter the bustle and perplexities of public life. But the extreme modesty and shyness of his nature, which disqualified him for scenes of business and ambition, endeared him inexpressibly to those who had opportunities to enjoy his society, and faculties to appreciate the uncommon excellence of his character. Reserved as he was to an extraordinary and painful degree, his heart and mind were yet admirably fashioned by nature for all the refined intercourse and confidential delights both of friendship and love; but though apparently formed to possess and to communicate an extraordinary portion of felicity, the incidents of his life were such, that, conspiring with the peculiarities of his nature, they rendered him, at different times, the most unhappy of mankind. The variety and depth of his sufferings, in early life, from extreme tenderness of heart, are very forcibly displayed in the following verses, which formed part of a letter to one of his female relations at the time they were composed. The letter has perished, and the verses owe their preservation to the affectionate memory of the lady to whom they were addressed. Doom'd, as I am, in solitude to waste The present moments, and regret the past; My friend torn from me, and my mistress lost; The dull effect of humour or of spleen! Still, still, I mourn, with each returning day, *Sir William Russel, the favourite friend of the young poet. Whose heart the real claim of friendship knows, Why all that soothes a heart from anguish free, When he quitted the house of the solicitor, where he was placed to acquire the rudiments of litigation, he settled himself in chambers of the Inner-Temple, as a regular student of law; but although he resided there to the age of thirty-three, he rambled (according to his own colloquial account of his early years) from the thorny road of his austere patroness, Jurisprudence, into the primrose paths of literature and poetry. Even here his native diffidence confined him to social and subordinate exertions. He wrote and printed both verse and prose, as the concealed assistant of less dif fident authors. During his residence in the Temple, he cultivated the friendship of some eminent literary characters, who had been his school-fellows at Westminster, particularly Colman, Bonnel Thornton, and Lloyd. His regard to the two former induced him to contribute to their periodical publication, entitled the Connois seur, three excellent papers, which the reader will find in the Appendix to these volumes; and from which he will perceive, that Cowper had such talents for this pleasant and useful species of composition, as might have rendered him a worthy associate, in such labours, to Addison himself, whose graceful powers have never been surpassed in that province of literature, which may still be considered as peculiarly his own. The intimacy of Cowper and Lloyd may have given rise perhaps to some early productions of our poet, which it may now be hardly possible to ascertain; the probability of this conjecture arises from the necessities of Lloyd, and the affectionate liberality of his triend. As the former was tempted by his narrow finances to engage in periodical works, it is highly probable that the pen of Cowper, ever ready to second the charitable wishes of his heart, might be devoted to the service of an indigent author, whom he appears to have loved with a very cordial affection. I find that affection agreeably displayed in a sportive poetical epistle, which may claim a place in this volume, not only as an early specimen of Cowper's poetry, but as exhibiting a sketch of his own mind at the age of twenty-three: AN EPISTLE to ROBERT LLOYD, Esq., 1754. "Tis not that I design to rob Thee of thy birth right, gentle Bob, For thou art born sole heir, and single, Of dear Mat Prior's easy jingle; |