"Obscurest night involved the sky,

The Atlantic billows roared,
When such a destined wretch as I,
Washed headlong from on board,
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
His floating home for ever left.

He long survives who lives an hour
In ocean self-upheld,

And so long he, with unspent power,
His destiny repelled;
And ever, as the minutes flew,
Entreated help, or cry'd' Adieu !'

No poet wept him, but the page
Of narrative sincere,

That tells his name, his worth, his age,
Is wet with Anson's tear:

And tears, by bards or heroes shed,
Alike immortalize the dead.

I therefore purpose not, or dream,
Descanting on his fate!
To give the melancholy theme
A more enduring date.

But misery still delights to trace
Its semblance in another's case.

No voice divine the storm allay'd,
No light propitions shone,
When snatched from all effectual aid,
We perished, each alone;
But I beneath a rougher sea,

And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he !" Anxious as all his friends now were, that he should be constantly employed, as this proved the best remedy for his depression, they were frequently pained to see him reduced to a state of hopeless inactivity, owing to the severity of his mental anguish. At these seasons, what suited him best was Mr. Johnson's reading to him, which he was accustomed to do, almost invariably for a length of time, every day. And so industriously had he persevered in this method of relieving the poet's mind, that after having exhausted numerous works of fiction which had the power of attracting his attention, he began to read to his afflicted relative the poet's own works. Cowper evinced no disapprobation to this till the reader arrived at the history of John Gilpin, when he entreated his relative to desist.

It became evident towards the close of 1799, that his bodily strength was rapidly declining, though his mental powers, notwithstanding the unmitigated severity of his depression, remained unimpaired. In January, 1800, Mr. Johnson observed in him many symptoms which he thought very unfavorable. This induced him to call in additional medical advice. His complaint was pronounced to be, not as has been generally stated, dropsical, but a breaking up of the constitution. Remedies however were tried, and he was recommended to take as much gentle exercise as he could bear. To this recommendation he discovered no particular aversion, and Mr. Johnson took him for a ride in a post-chaise as often as circumstances would permit; it was, however, with considerable difficulty he could be prevailed upon to use such medicines as it was thought necessary to employ.

About this time his friend Mr. Hayley wrote to him, expressing a wish that he would new-model a passage in his translation of the Iliad, where mention is made of the very ancient sculpture in which Dædalus had represented the Cretan dance for Ariadne. "On the 31st January," says Mr. Hayley, "I received from him his improved version of the lines in question, written in a firm and delicate hand. The sight of such writing from my long silent

friend, inspired me with a lively, but too sanguine hope, that I might see him once more restored. Alas! the verses which I surveyed as a delightful omen of future letters from a correspondent so inexpressibly dear to me, proved the last effort of his pen."

Cowper's weakness now very rapidly increased, and by the end of February it had become so great as to render him incapable of enduring the fatigue of his usual ride, which was hence discontinued. In a few days he ceased to come down stairs, though he was still able, after breakfasting in bed, to adjourn to another room, and to remain there till the evening. By the end of the ensuing March, he was compelled to forego even this trifling exercise. He was now entirely confined to his bed-room; he was, however, still able to sit up to every meal except breakfast.

His friend, Mr. Rose, about this time, paid him a visit. Such, however, was the melancholy change which his complicated maladies had produced upon his mind, that he expressed no pleasure at the arrival of one whom he had previously been accustomed to greet with the most cordial reception. Mr. Rose remained with him till the first week in April, witnessing with much sorrow the sufferings of the afflicted poet, and kindly sympathizing with his distressed relations and friends. Little as Cowper had appeared to enjoy his company, he evinced symptoms of considerable regret at his departure.

Both Lady Hesketh and Mr. Hayley would have followed the humane example of Mr. Rose, in visiting the dying poet, had they not been prevented by circumstances over which they had no control. The health of the former had suffered considerably by her long confinement with Cowper, at the commencement of his last attack, and the latter was detained by the impending death of a darling child.

Mr. Johnson informs us, in his sketch of the poet's life, that, "on the 19th April the weakness of this truly pitiable sufferer had so much increased that his kinsman apprehended his death to be near. Adverting, therefore, to the affliction, as well of body as of mind, which his beloved inmate was then enduring, he ventured to speak of his approaching dissolution as the signal of his deliverance from both these miseries. After a pause of a few mo ments, which was less interrupted by the objections of his desponding relative than he had dared to hope, he proceeded to an observation more consolatory still-namely, that in the world to which he was hastening, a merciful Redeemer, who had prepared unspeakable happiness for all his children, and therefore for him. To the first part of this sentence he had listened with composure, but the concluding words were no sooner uttered than his passionately expressed entreaties that his companion would desist from any further observations of a similar kind, clearly proved that though he was on the eve of being invested with angelic light, the darkness of delusion still veiled his spirit."

On the following day, which was Sunday, he revived a little. Mr. Johnson, on repairing to his room, after he had discharged his clerical duties, found him in bed and asleep. He did not, however, leave the room, but remained watching him, expecting he might, on awaking, require his assistance. Whilst engaged in this melancholy office, and endeavoring to reconcile his mind to the loss of so dear a friend, by considering the gain which that friend would experience, his reflections were suddenly interrupted by the singularly varied tone in which Cowper then began to breathe. Imagining it to be the sound of his immediate summons, after listening to it for several minutes, he arose from the foot of the bed on which he was sitting, to take a nearer, and, as he supposed, a last view of

his departing relative, commending his soul to that | sure they have never been in print, though he rather gracious Saviour, whom, in the fulness of mental inclines to think such is the case. health, he had delighted to honor. As he put aside the curtains, Cowper opened his eyes, but closed them again without speaking, and breathed as usual. On Monday he was much worse; though, towards the close of the day, he revived sufficiently to take a little refreshment. The two following days he evidently continued to sink rapidly. He revived a little on Thursday, but, in the course of the night, he appeared exceedingly exhausted: some refreshment was presented to him by Miss Perowne, but, owing to a persuasion that nothing could afford him relief, though without any apparent impression that the hand of death was already upon him, he mildly rejected the cordial with these words, the last he was heard to utter-"What can it signify?"

cheerful, and his whole deportment was the most polite and graceful, especially to females, towards whom he conducted himself, on all occasions, with the strictest delicacy and propriety.

Much as Cowper was admired by those who knew him only as a writer, or as an occasional correspondent, he was infinitely more esteemed by his more intimate friends; indeed, the more intimately he was known, the more he was beloved and revered. Nor was this affectionate attachment so much the result of his brilliant talents, as it was of the real goodness of his disposition, and gentleness of his conduct.

much accustomed to the style and manner of others, it is almost impossible to avoid it, and we imitate, in spite of ourselves, just in the same proportion as we admire." Cowper's mode of expressing his thoughts is entirely original: his blank verse is not the blank verse of Milton, or of any other poet. His numbers, his pauses, his diction, are all of his own growth, without transcription, and without imitation. If he thinks in a peculiar train, it is always as a man of genius, and what is better still, as a man of ardent and unaffected piety. His predecessors had circumscribed themselves, both in the choice and management of their subjects, by the observance of Cowper was emphatically, in the strictest and most a limited number of models, who were thought to have scriptural sense of the term, a good man. His good- exhausted all the legitimate resources of the art. "But ness, however, was not the result of mere effort, uncon- Cowper," says a great modern critic, at once ventured nected with Christian principles, nor did it arise from to cross this enchanted circle, and thus regained the the absence of those evil dispositions of which all have natural liberty of invention, and walked abroad in the reason, more or less, to complain; on the contrary, all open field of observation as freely as those by whom it his writings prove that he felt and deplored the existence was originally trodden. He passed from the imitation of evil affections, and was only able to suppress them of poets to the imitation of nature, and ventured boldly by a cordial reception of the gospel of Christ, and the upon the representation of objects that none before him diligent use of those means enforced under that pure had imagined could be employed in poetic imagery. In and self-denying dispensation. Nor was the goodness the ordinary occupations, occurrences, and duties of doof Cowper a mere negative goodness, inducing him only mestic life, he found a multitude of subjects for ridicule to avoid doing evil; it is evident, from many passages, and reflection, for pathetic and picturesque description, both from his poetic and prose productions, that he ever for moral declamation and devotional rapture, that looked upon his talents, not as his own, but as belong. would have been looked upon with disdain or despair by ing to Him from whom he had received them. Under all his predecessors. He took as wide a range in lanthe influence of this impression, all his best and most guage too, as in matter; and shaking off the tawdry enimportant_original productions were unquestionably cumbrance of that poetical diction which had nearly rewritten. Desirous of communicating to his fellow-men duced poetry to a skilful collection of a set of appropriatthe same invaluable benefits which he had himself re-ed phrases, he made no scruple to set down in verse ceived from the simple yet sublime truths of Christia- every expression that would have been admitted in nity, and incapable of attempting it in any other way prose; and to take advantage of all the varieties and than that of becoming an author, he took up his pen changes of which our language is susceptible." and produced those unrivalled poems, which, while they It has been justly remarked, "that between the poetry delight the mere literary reader for their elegance, of Cowper and that of Dryden and Pope, and some of beauty, and sublimity, are no less interesting to the their successors, there is an immense difference. It Christian for the accurate and striking delineations of would be easy to show how little he owed to his immereal religion, with which they abound. As long as the diate forerunners, and how much his immediate followEnglish language exists, they will most eagerly be ers have been indebted to him. All the cant phrases, sought after, both by the scholar and by the Christian. all the technicalities of the former school, he utterly Cowper was warmly attached to the religion of the threw away; and by his rejection of them, they became established church, in which he had been trained up, obsolete. He boldly adopted cadences of verse unatand which, like his friend Mr. Newton, he calmly and tempted before, which, though frequently uncouth, and deliberately preferred to any other. His attachment, sometimes scarcely reducible to rhyme, were not selhowever, was not that of the narrow-minded bigot dom ingeniously significant, and signally energetic. He which blinds the mind to the excellencies of every other feared not to employ colloquial, philosophical, judicial religious community; on the contrary, it was the at- idioms, and forms of argument and illustration, which tachment of the firm and steady friend of religious liber- enlarged the vocabulary of poetical terms, less by recurty, in the most liberal sense of the term. Of a sectarian ring to obsolete ones, than by hazardous, and generally spirit he was ever the open and avowed opponent. He happy innovations of his own invention, which have sincerely and very highly respected the conscientious of since become dignified by usage; but which Pope and all parties. In one of his letters to Mr. Newton, advert- his imitators durst not have touched. The eminent ading to a passage in his writings that was likely to ex-venturous revivers of English poetry, about thirty years pose him to the charge of illiberality, he thus writes. When I wrote the passage in question, I was not at all aware of any impropriety in it. I am however, glad you have condemned it; and though I do not feel as if I could presently supply its place, shall be willing to attempt the task, whatever labor it may cost me; and rejoice that it will not be in the power of the critics, whatever else they may charge me with, to accuse me of bigotry, or a design to make a certain denomination odious at the hazard of the public peace. I had rather my book should be burnt, than a single line guilty of such tendency should escape me."

Cowper's attainments as a scholar were highly respectable; he was master of four languages, besides his own: Greek, Latin, Italian, and French; and though his reading was by no means so extensive as that of some, it was turned to better account, as he was a most thoughtful and attentive reader, and it was undoubtedly amply sufficient for every purpose, with a genius so brifliant, and a mind so original as his.

The productions of Cowper were eminently and entirely his own; he had neither borrowed from, nor imitated any one. He copied from none, either as to his subjects, or the manner of treating them. All was the creation of his own inventive genius. Adverting to this circumstance, in one of his letters, he thus writes:-"I reckon it among my principal advantages as a composer of verses, that I have not read an English poet these thirteen years, and but one these twenty years. Imitation even of the best models is my aversion; it is a servile and mechanical trick, that has enabled many to usurp the name of author, who could not have written at all, if they had not written upon the pattern of some original. But when the ear and the taste have been

ago, Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, in their blank verse, trod directly in the steps of Cowper; and, in their early productions at least, were each in a measure what he had made them. Cowper may be legitimately styled the father of this triumvirate, who are, in truth, the living fathers of an innumerable company of modern poets, whom no ingenuity can well classify and arrange."

The poetry of Cowper is in the highest degree deserving the honorable appellation of Christian poetry. He consecrated his muse to the service of that pure and self-denying religion, taught by Christ and his apostles. In this respect his poems differed from the productions of any writers that had then appeared, with the excep tion of Milton and Young. Both these individuals, though they wrote on religious subjects, yet in all probability wrote principally for fame with Cowper, however, the desire of doing good predominated over every other feeling; and the hope of emolument, nay, even the love of fame itself, was looked upon as subordinate to this great object, the last to which poets generally pay any consideration. To YOUNG, Cowper was evidently superior, in every thing that constitutes real poetic excellence: and equal to MILTON in the ease and elegance of his compositions, and in the vivacity and beauty of his imagery, though seldom, and perhaps never, rising to that majestic sublimity, to which the author of Paradise Lost sometimes soared, and in which he stands unrivalled among modern, if not among ancient poets. Milton's matchless poem is a most sublime description of the great facts of the Christian system every line of it fills the reader with surprise. Hurried on through a profusion of imagery splendid and grand, and never inelegant, tawdry, or ungraceful, the mind be

comes astonished, and is much more powerfully affected than the heart. We look in vain for those touching appeals to the affections with which Cowper's poetry abounds, which come home to the bosoms and hearts of all.

"Poet and Saint, to him is justly given,

The two most sacred names of earth and heaven." In the productions of Milton and Young, there is not much of practical, and still less of experimental, piety. They confined themselves chiefly to the theory of religion. Cowper, on the contrary, whose views of the great leading truths of Christianity were equally, if not more comprehensive, describes, with unequalled simplicity and beauty, those less splendid, but not less useful, parts of religion, which his predecessors had left almost untouched: hence the superiority of his muse to theirs in these respects. No uninspired orator ever so happily and so strikingly described the operations of Divine grace upon the human soul. The gospel had come home to him, not in word only, but in demonstration of the Spirit, and in power. He not only possessed a comprehensive knowledge of the Christian system, which enabled him, whenever he had occasion for it, to describe and illustrate, with all the force and beauty of poetic enchantment, that solid foundation on which the Christian builds his hopes, but he had himself felt the astonishing efficacy of these truths on the heart, when truly and cordially received. This accounts for the unrivalled felicity with which he describes the happy influence of Christianity in all cases where it is rightly embraced, unless, as in his own case, its influence be prevented by some unaccountable bodily distemper. Treating the great peculiarities of the Christian system-the depravity of man-the necessity of regeneration-the efficacy of the atonement access to God, through the Divine Spiritjustification by faith, with others of a like kind, not merely as subjects of inquiry, but as things which had been to him matters of actual experience, it is no wonder that his muse sometimes carried him to a depth of Christian feeling, unsung, and even unattempted before. As he himself, in his poem on Charity, beautifully sings"When one that holds communion with the skies Has fill'd his urn, where these pure waters rise, And once more mingles with us meaner things, 'Tis e'en as if an angel shook his wings; Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide,

was the first to show that poetry may be made the handmaid to religion. When he gave to the world the productions of his unrivalled pen, they saw, indeed, -"a bard all fire,

Touched with a coal from heaven, assume the lyre, And tell the world, still kindling as he sung, With more than mortal music on his tongue, That he who died below, and reigns above, Inspires the song, and that his name was love." Cowper's religious sentiments were undoubtedly Calvinistic, and though his views of divine truth were generally unexceptionable, they were sometimes rather strongly tinged with the peculiarities of that system. On no occasion, however, that comes within our recollection, do we find him speaking of the character of God in such terms as would lead any, who were sincerely desirous of approaching Him in the way of his own appointment, to doubt of gracious reception at his hands. His own case, indeed, must be excepted, as his melancholy depression ever led him to regard himself as a solitary instance of the rejection of God and of the reversal of his decree. It could seldom, if ever, be inferred from any of his representations, that he thought the Divine Being, by the mere excercise of his sovereignty, continued any of his creatures, except, indeed, it were himself, in a state of suffering in the present life, or placed them beyond the means of escaping from misery in the future. His views of the atonement, and of the infinite extent of its efficacy, were such as led him, whenever he had occasion to advert to it, to represent it truly, as a solid ground of hope and comfort, to every converted sinner, whatever might have been his character. He felt an entire conviction that he whose infinite compassion had prompted him to make provision for the restoration of fallen man to his favor, intended it to be universally beneficial; and that the perverseness and obstinacy of men were the only reasons why it was not so. That he should have regarded his own case as an exception, and should, consequently, have passed the greater part of his life in the bitterness of despair, is a difficulty which we are persuaded will, in the present life, for ever remain unaccounted for. To assert, as some have done, on no other foundation than that of mere opinion, that had he not been religious he would never have been melancholy, is utterly at variance with all the leading facts of his history. To every That tells us whence his treasures are supplied." well regulated mind, it will be abundantly evident, that, "Cowper," as Mr. Hayley justly observes, "accom- whatever reasons may be assigned for the affecting pe plished as a poet, the sublimest object of poetic ambition culiarity of his case, the deep concern he felt for religion -he has dissipated the general prejudice that held it could never have been the cause. On the contrary, it hardly possible for a modern author to succeed in will appear clearly to have been much more likely to sacred poetry. He has proved that verse and devotion become the best preventive, as, in fact, the events of are natural allies. He has shown that true poetical his life prove it to have been, though, owing to some ungenius cannot be more honorably or more delightfully accountable organic conformation, much less completeemployed than in diffusing through the heart and mindly than might have been hoped. of man a filial affection for his Maker, with a firm and cheerful trust in his word. He has sung in a strain, in some degree at least equal to the great subject, the blessed advent of the Messiah; and perhaps it will not be saying too much, to assert that his poetry will have no inconsiderable influence in preparing the world for the cordial reception of all the rich blessings which this

event was intended to introduce."

Up to the period when Cowper's productions were given to the world, it was foolishly imagined impossible successfully to employ the graces and beauties of poetry on the side of virtue. A great modern critic had inconsiderately declared that "contemplative piety cannot be poetical." Had he asserted only, that it had very rarely been so, the assertion would not have been unjust. It would, indeed, have coincided with the views entertained by Cowper himself; for, of his predecessors' productions, with few exceptions, no one could have formed a more correct opinion, as will appear by the following lines:

"Pity religion has so seldom found

A skilful guide into poetic ground!

The flowers would spring where'er she deigned to stray,
And every muse attend her in her way.
Virtue indeed meets many a rhyming friend,
And many a compliment politely penned;
But unattired in that becoming vest
Religion weaves for her, and half undressed,
Stands in the desert, shivering and forlorn,"
A wintry figure, like a withered thorn."

This censure, severely as it may fall on most of Cowper's predecessors, is not unjust. His muse, however,

No person was ever more alive to the benefits of real friendship, or had ever formed more correct conceptions of its obligations and delights. His inimitable stanzas, on this most interesting subject, which are perhaps superior to any thing that has ever been written upon it, prove incontestibly that he understood what were its through life shows that he felt the full force of that indispensable prerequisites, and his whole conduct friendship which he so admirably described. It is difficult to make extracts from a poem, every line of which is selves the pleasure of presenting our readers with the almost alike excellent: we cannot, however, deny ourfollowing admirable lines:

Who hopes a friend, should have a heart
Himself, well furnished for the part,
And ready on occasion,
To show the virtue that he seeks;
For 'tis a union that bespeaks
A just reciprocation.

A man renowned for repartee
Will seldom scruple to make free

With friendship's finest feeling;
Will thrust a dagger at your breast,
And tell you 'twas a special jest,
By way of balm for healing.
Beware of tattlers! keep your ear
Close stopt against the tales they bear,
Fruits of their own invention!
The separation of chief friends,
Is what their business most intends,
Their sport is your dissension.