presented to the vicarage of Herne, near Canterbury. Thus placed in easy circumstances and a respectacle station in life, he devoted his time to the duties of friendship and society, employing his leisure from public services in the pursuits of elegant literature. He wrote a very considerable number of poems, which have appeared in various collections, as those of Dodsley, Pearch, and Nichols; and several in a separate form. Of these, one of the best known is "The Feminead," a commemoration of female excellence. Their general character is ease and elegance, with a sprightly vein of humour when the subject called it forth. He wrote also a variety of prose essays in periodical works. He gave con He siderable assistance to his father when engaged in the translation of Horace. published three sermons, and some antiquarian papers in the Bibliotheca Topographica. He also edited various works; of which were "The Correspondence of John Hughes Esq.; "The Earl of Corke's Letters from Italy;" and "Archbishop Herring's Letters." He closed an useful and benevolent life in 1785. The next contributor to the Connoisseur that claims our attention is Mr. WILLIAM COWPER, the distinguished author of "The Task." This gentleman was born at Berkhamstead, in Hertfordshire, in 1732. His father, the rector of the parish, was John Cowper, D.D. nephew to Lord Chancellor Cowper. Mr. Cowper was educated at Westminster school, and at that seminary he acquired the classical knowledge and correctness of taste for which it is celebrated, but without any portion of the confident and undaunted spirit which is supposed to be one of the most valuable acquisitions derived from great schools to those who are to push their way in the world. It appears, indeed, from his poem, entitled "Tirocinium," that the impressions made on his mind from what he witnessed were of the most unfavourable kind, and gave him a permanent dislike to the system of public education. As through family interest the honourable and lucrative place of clerk to the House of Lords had been provided for him, he was entered at the Temple for the study of the law, in order to qualify him for it. In this situation his manners were amiable and decent; and though it is probable that he did not refuse to indulge in those pleasures which are usual among young men similarly situated, yet there seems no reasons to suppose that he had any peculiar cause for self-accusation. His natural disposition was timid and diffident; his spirits were constitutionally weak, even to the borders of absolute unfitness for worldly concerns; so that when the time came for assuming that post to which he had been destined, he shrunk with such terror from the idea of making his appearance before the most august asssmbly in the nation, that, after a violent struggle with himself, he actually resigned the employment, and with it all his prospects in life. It appears to have been under the agitation of mind which this circumstance occasioned, and which threw him into a serious illness, that he was led to a deep consideration of his state in a religious view; and from the system he had adopted, this course of reflection excited in him the most alarming and distressful apprehensions. In vain did his theological friends set before him those encouraging views which the theory of Christian justification is calculated to present, and which to many is the source of a confidence perhaps as excessive as their former fears; the natural disposition of his mind fitted it to receive all the horrors, without the consolations, of his faith. We are told, that the terror of eternal judgment, overpowered and wholly disordered his faculties; and he remained seven months in a continual expectation of being instantly plunged into final misery." In this shocking condition he became the subject of medical care, and he was placed in the receptacle for lunatics kept by Dr. Cotton, of St. Alban's, an amiable and worthy physician, and the author of some well-known poems. At length he recovered a degree of serenity; but his mind had acquired that indelible tinge of melancholy by which it was ever after characterised, and which rendered his whole life little more than a succession of intervals of comfort between long paroxysms of settled despondency. It is unnecessary to follow him through all his scenes of retirement. Part of his time was spent at the house of his relation, Earl Cowper, at Colegreen; and part at Huntingdon, with his intimate friend, the Rev. Mr. Unwin. After the death of the latter, he removed with his widow to Olney in Buchinghamshire, which was thenceforth the place of his residence. The affection ate intimacy he enjoyed with his lady is strongly expressed in the following lines, which have probably been understood by most readers as expressive of a conjugal union : Witness, dear companion of my walks, TASK, B. I. At Olney he contracted a close friendship with the reverend Mr. Newton, then minister there, and since rector of St. Mary Woolnot, London, whose religious opinions were in unison with his own. To a collection of hymns published by him, Mr. Cowper contributed a large number of his own composition. He first became known to the public in general as a poet by a volume printed in 1782. The pieces of which it consisted were of a singular cast; and if they did not at once place the writer high in the scale of poetic excellence, they sufficiently established his claim to originality, and gave tokens of a genius rather kept down by his |