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,
Drew me to school along the public way;
Delighted with my bauble coach, and wrapt
In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet-capt.
Tis now become a history tittle known,

That once we called the past'ral house our own.
Short-lived possession! but the record fair
That memory keeps of all thy kindness there,
Still out-lives many a storm, that has effaced
A thousand other themes less deeply traced.
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 plum;

The fragrant waters on my cheeks bestowed

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 honours to thee, as my numbers may.

The parent whose merits are so feelingly re

corded 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 twenty-sixth 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 thirty-four, 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. 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 fifty years after her decease. Readers of this description may find a pleasure in observing how the praise so liberally be

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. A record written at a time when the poet, who was destined to prove, in his advanced life, her most powerful eulogist, had hardly begun to shew the dawn of that genius, which after many years of silent affliction, arose like a star emerging from tempestuous darkness.

The monument of Mrs. Cowper, erected by her husband in the chancel of St. Peter's church at Berkhamstead, contains the following 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 practic'd any art,
Secure in all she wish'd, her husband's heart.

Her love to him still prevalent in death,

Pray'd Heaven 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 chearful, 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 colouring 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 discovered at a very early season that morbid tendency to diffidence, to melancholy, and de

spair, which darkened, as he advanced in years, into periodical fits of the most deplorable depression.

It may afford an ample field for useful reflection to observe, in speaking of a child, that he was destined to excite in his progress through life, the highest degrees of admiration, and of pity-of admiration for mental excellence, and of pity for mental disorder.

We understand human nature too imperfectly to ascertain in what measure the original structure of his frame, and the casual incidents of his life, contributed to the happy perfection of his genius, or to the calamitous eclipses of his effulgent mind. Yet such were the talents, the virtues, and the misfortunes of this wonderful person, that it is hardly possible for Biography, extensive as her province is, to speak of a more interesting individual, or to select a subject on which it may be more difficult to satisfy a variety of readers. In feeling all the weight of this difficulty, I may still be confident that I shall not utterly disappoint his sincerest admirers, if the success of my endeavours to make him more known, and more belov ed, is proportioned, in any degree, to the zeal with which I cultivated his friendship, and to the gratification that I feel in recalling to my own recollection