possess and to communicate an extraordinary portion of moral felicity, the incidents of his life were such, that, conspiring with the peculiarities of his nature, they rendered him, at different times, the victim of sorrow. The variety and depth of his sufferings in early life, from extreme tenderness of feeling, are very forcibly displayed in the following verses, which formed part of a letter to one of his female relatives, 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;
Depriv'd of every joy I valued most,

My friend torn from me, and my mistress lost;
Call not this gloom I wear, this anxious mien,
The dull effect of humour, or of spleen!

Still, still, I mourn, with each returning day,
Him* snatch'd by fate in early youth away.
And her thro' tedious years of doubt and pain,
Fix'd in her choice, and faithful-but in vain !
O prone to pity, generous, and sincere,

Whose eye ne'er yet refus'd the wretch a tear;
Whose heart the real claim of friendship knows,
Nor thinks a lover's are but fancied woes;
See me-ere yet my destin'd course half done,
Cast forth a wand'rer on a world unknown!
See me neglected on the world's rude coast,
Each dear companion of my voyage lost!

Sir William Russel, the favourite friend of the young poet.

Nor ask why clouds of sorrow shade my brow,
And ready tears wait only leave to flow!
Why all that soothes a heart from anguish free,
All that delights the happy-palls with me!

Having concluded the term of his engagement with the solicitor, he settled himself in chambers in the Inner Temple, as a regular student of law; but, although he resided there till the age of thirtythree, 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 diffident authors. During this period, he cultivated the friendship of some literary characters, who had been his schoolfellows at Westminster, particularly Colman, Bonnel Thornton, and Lloyd. His regard for the two first induced him to contribute to their periodical publication, entitled the Connoisseur, three excellent papers, which afford satisfactory evidence that Cowper had such talents for this pleasant and useful species of composition, as might have rendered him a worthy associate, in such labours, with Addison himself, whose gracefnl powers have never been surpassed in that province of literature, which may be considered as peculiarly his own.

The interest which he took in the society and

productions of literary men tended, probably, to increase his powerful, though diffident passion for poetry, and to train him imperceptibly to that masterly command of language, which time and circumstances led him to display, almost as a new talent, at the age of fifty. One of his first associates has informed me that, before he quitted London, he frequently amused himself in translation from ancient and modern poets, and devoted his composition to the service of any friend who requested it. In a copy of Duncombe's Horace, printed in 1750, I find two of the satires translated by Cowper. The Duncombes, father and son, were amiable scholars, of a Hertfordshire family; and the elder Duncombe, in his printed Letters, mentions Dr. Cowper (the father of the poet) as one of his friends, who possessed a talent for poetry, exhibiting at the same time a respectable specimen of his verse. The Duncombes, in the preface to their Horace, impute the size of their work to the poetical contributions of their friends. It does not appear at what time the two satires we have mentioned were translated by Cowper; but they are worthy his pen, and indications of his rising genius.

Speaking of his own early life, in a Letter to Mr. Park, (dated March, 1792,) Cowper says, with that extreme modesty which was one of his most remarkable characteristics-" From the age of twenty to thirty-three I was occupied, or ought to have been, in the study of the law; from thirtythree to sixty, I have spent my time in the country,

where my reading has been only an apology for idleness, and where, when I had not either a magazine, or a review, I was sometimes a carpenter, at others a bird-cage-maker, or a gardener, or a drawer of landscapes. At fifty years of age I commenced an author:-it is a whim that has served me longest and best, and will probably be my last."

Lightly as this most modest of poets has spoken of his own exertions, and late as he appeared to himself in producing his chief poetical works, he had received from nature a contemplative spirit, incessantly acquiring a store of mental treasure, which he at last unveiled, to delight and astonish the world with its unexpected beauty and richness. Even his juvenile verses discover a mind deeply impressed with sentiments of piety; and in proof of this assertion I select a few stanzas from an ode, written, when he was very young, on reading Sir Charles Grandison.

To rescue from the tyrant's sword
The oppress'd;-unseen, and unimplor'd,

To cheer the face of woe;

From lawless insult to defend

An orphan's right-a fallen friend,

And a forgiven foe.

These, these, distinguish from the crowd,
And these alone, the great and good,
The guardians of mankind;

Whose bosoms with these virtues heave,

Oh! with what matchless speed, they leave
The multitude behind!

Then ask ye from what cause on earth
Virtues like these derive their birth?

Derived from Heaven alone,

Full on that favour'd breast they shine,
Where faith and resignation join

To call the blessing down.

Such is that heart :-but while the Muse
Thy theme, O RICHARDSON, pursues,
Her feebler spirits faint:

She cannot reach, and would not wrong,
That subject for an angel's song,

The hero, and the saint.

His early turn to moralize on the slightest occasion will appear from the following verses, which he wrote at the age of eighteen; and in which those who love to trace the rise and progress of genius will, I think, be pleased to remark the very promising seeds of those peculiar powers, which unfolded themselves in the richest maturity at a remoter period, and rendered that beautiful and sublime poem, THE TASK, the most instructive and interesting of modern compositions. Young as the poet was, when he produced the following lines, we may observe that he had probably been four years in the habit of writing English verse, as he has said in one of his letters that he began his poetical career at the age of fourteen, by translating an elegy of Tibullus. I have reason to believe that he wrote many poems in his early life; and the singular merit of this juvenile composition is sufficient to make the friends of genius regret that an excess of diffidence prevented him from preserving the poetry of his youth.