hold those two offices to the end of his life. He died in Lincoln's Inn, on the tenth of December, 1728, and has the higher claim to our notice as the immediate ancestor of the Poet. By Theodora his second wife, the widow of George Stepney, Esqr. 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 cotemporary 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, and whose amiable character 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 with peculiar purity and fervor, the double enthusiasm of poetry and devotion. The father of the great author to whom I allude, was John Cowper, the judge's second son, who took his degrees in divinity, was chaplain to King George the Second, and resided at his Rectory of Great Berkhamstead, in Hertfordshire, the scene of the Poet's infancy, which he has thus commemorated in a singularly beautiful and pathetic composition on the portrait of his mother.

Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more,
Children not thine have trod my nurs'ry floor,
And where the gardner Robin day by day,
Drew me to school along the public way,

Delighted

Delighted with my bauble coach, and wrapt
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 trac'd.
Thy nightly visits to my chamber made,

That thou might'st know me safe and warmly laid.
Thy morning bounties, ere I left my home,

The biscuit, or confectionary plumb;

The fragrant waters on my cheeks bestow'd

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,
That humour interpos'd too often makes,
All this, still legible in memory's page,
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, Esqr. 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 leaving two sons, William, the immediate subject of this memorial, born at Berkhamstead on the 26th of November, N. S. 1731, and John (whose accomplishments and memorable death will be described in the course of this compilation), she died

in childbed at the early age of 34, in 1737. It may be wished that the painter employed to preserve a resemblance of such a woman had possessed those powers of graceful and perfect delineation, which in a different art belonged to the pen of her son, but her portrait executed by Heins in oil-colours, on a small scale, is a production infinitely inferior to the very beautiful poem to which it gave rise. Yet such as it is, I apprehend it will gratify my Reader to find it in this volume correctly engraved, for what lover of poetry can fail to take an affectionate interest in the mother of Cowper? Those who delight in contemplating the best affections of our nature, will ever admire the tender sensibility with which the Poet has acknowledged his obligations to this amiable mother, in a poem composed more than 50 years after her decease. 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 confirmation) by another poetical record of her merit, which the hand of affinity and affection bestowed upon her tomb. cord written at a time when the Poet, who was destined to prove in his advanced life her more powerful eulogist, had hardly begun to shew the dawn of that genius, which after years of silent affliction, arose like a star emerging from tempestuous darkness.

A re

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