THE LIFE OF COWPER.

PART THE FIRST.

Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more;
Children not thine have trod my nursery floor:
And where the gard'ner Robin, day by day,
Delighted with my bauble coach, and wrapt
Drew me to school along the public way,
In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet-capt,
'Tis now become a history little known,
That once we call'd the past'ral house our own.
Short-liv'd possession! but the record fair
That memory keeps of all thy kindness there,
Still outlives many a storm, that has effac'd
A thousand other themes less deeply traced.
That thou might'st know me safe and warmly
Thy nightly visits to my chamber made, [laid;
Thy morning bounties ere I left my home,
The biscuit or confectionary plum;

THE family of COWPER appears to have with peculiar purity and fervor, the double held, for several centuries, a respectable rank enthusiasm of poetry and devotion. The among the merchants and gentry of England. father of the subject of the following pages We learn from the life of the first Earl Cow-was John Cowper, the Judge's second son, per, in the Biographia Britannica, that his an- who took his degrees in divinity, was chapcestors were inhabitants of Sussex, in the lain to King George the Second, and resided reign of Edward the Fourth. The name is at his Rectory of Great Berkhamstead, in found repeatedly among the sheriffs of Lon- Hertfordshire, the scene of the poet's indon; and William Cowper, who resided as a fancy, which he has thus commemorated in a country gentleman in Kent, was created a singularly beautiful and pathetic composition baronet by King Charles the First, in 1641.* on the portrait of his mother. But the family rose to higher distinction in the beginning of the last century, by the remarkable circumstance of producing two brothers, who both obtained a seat in the House of Peers by their eminence in the profession of the law. William, the elder, became Lord High Chancellor in 1707. Spencer Cowper, the younger, was appointed Chief Justice of Chester in 1717, and afterwards a Judge in the Court of Common Pleas, being permitted by the particular favor of the king, to hold those two offices to the end of his life. He died in Lincoln's Inn, on the 10th of December, 1728, and has the higher claim to our notice as the immediate ancestor of the poet. By his first wife, Ju-The fragrant waters on my cheeks bestowed dith Pennington (whose exemplary character is still revered by her descendants), Judge Cowper left several children; among them a daughter, Judith, who at the age of eighteen discovered a striking talent for poetry, in the praise of her contemporary poets Pope and Hughes. This lady, the wife of Colonel Madan, transmitted her own poetical and devout spirit to her daughter Frances Maria, who was married to her cousin, Major Cowper; the amiable character of Maria will unfold itself in the course of this work, as the friend and correspondent of her more eminent relation, the second grandchild of the Judge, destined to honor the name of Cowper, by displaying,

This gentleman was a writer of English verse, and, with rare munificence, bestowed both an epitaph and a monument on that illustrious divine, the venerable Hooker. In the edition of Walton's Lives, by Zouch, the curious reader may find the epitaph written by Sir William Cowper.

By thy own hand, till fresh they shone and glow'd;
All this, and, more endearing still than all,
Thy constant flow of love, that knew no fall;
Ne'er roughen'd by those cataracts and breaks
All this, still legible in memory's page,
That humor interpos'd too often makes:
And still to be so to my latest age,
Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay
Such honors to thee as my numbers may.

The parent, whose merits are so feelingly recorded by the filial tenderness of the poet, was Ann, daughter of Roger Donne, Esq., of Ludham Hall, in Norfolk. This lady, whose family is said to have been originally from Wales, was married in the bloom of youth to Dr. Cowper: after giving birth to several children, who died in their infancy, and leav ing two sons, William, the immediate subject of this memorial, born at Berkhamstead on the 26th of November, 1731, and John (whose

accomplishments and pious death will be de-
scribed in the course of this compilation), she
died in childbed, at the early age of thirty-
four, in 1737. Those who delight in con-
templating the best affections of our nature
will ever admire the tender sensibility with
which the poet has acknowledged his obli-
gations to this amiable mother, in a poem
composed more than fifty years after her de-
cease. Readers of this description may find
a pleasure in observing how the praise so
liberally bestowed on this tender parent, at
so late a period, is confirmed (if praise so
unquestionable may be said to receive con-
firmation) by another poetical record of her
merit, which the hand of affinity and affection
bestowed upon her tomb-a record written
at a time when the poet, who was destined
to prove, in his advanced life, her most pow-"
erful eulogist, had hardly begun to show the
dawn of that genius which, after many years
of silent affliction, rose like a star emerging
from tempestuous darkness.

ered at a very early season that morbid tendency to diffidence, to melancholy and despair, which darkened as he advanced in years into periodical fits of the most deplorable depression.

The period having arrived for commencing his education, he was sent to a reputable school at Market-street, in Bedfordshire, 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 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 eyes, 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

The monument of Mrs. Cowper, erected by her husband in the chancel of St. Peter's church at Berkhamstead, contains the follow-school, where, at the age of fourteen, the ing verses, composed by a young lady, her niece, the late Lady Walsingham.

Here lies, in early years bereft of life,
The best of mothers, and the kindest wife:
Who neither knew nor practis'd any art.
Secure in all she wish'd, her husband's heart.
Her love to him, still prevalent in death,
Pray'd Heav'n to bless him with her latest breath.

Still was she studious never to offend,
And glad of an occasion to commend:
With ease would pardon injuries receiv'd,
Nor e'er was cheerful when another griev'd;
Despising state, with her own lot content,
Enjoy'd the comforts of a life well spent;
Resign'd, when Heaven demanded back her

breath,

Her mind heroic 'midst the pangs of death.
Whoe'er thou art that dost this tomb draw near,
O stay awhile and shed a friendly tear;
These lines, tho' 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 coloring 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 discov

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 be fore 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 attendant on a publie school. But the mother of Cowper was dead, and fathers, however excellent, are, in general, utterly incompetent to the manage ment of their young and tender offspring. in the year of his mother's death, and how illThe little Cowper was sent to his first school suited the scene was to his peculiar character is evident from the description of 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 suffered in his childish years, from the cruelty of his school-fellows, in the two scenes of his education. His own foreible expressions represented him at Westminster as not daring to raise his eye above the shoebuckle 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) mournful periods of increasing timidity and depression. In the most cheerful hours of his advanced life, he could never advert to this season