The pictures placed for ornament and use,
The Twelve Good Rules, the Royal game of Goose;
The hearth, except when winter chilled the day,
With aspen boughs, and flowers, and fennel, gay;
While broken tea-cups, wisely kept for show,
Ranged o'er the chimney, glistened in a row.
Yes! let the rich deride, the proud disdain
These simple blessings of the lowly train;
To me more dear, congenial to my heart,
One native charm, than all the gloss of art:
Spontaneous joys, where Nature has its play,
The soul adopts, and owns their first-born sway;
Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind,
Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined:

But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade,
With all the freaks of wanton wealth arrayed,
In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain,
The toiling pleasure sickens into pain;
And, even while fashion's brightest arts decoy,
The heart distrusting asks-if this be joy?

COWPER.

PRINCIPAL EVENTS OF HIS LIFE.-William Cowper was born in 1731, at Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire. He received the latter part of his education at Westminster School, on leaving which he entered the office of a London solicitor. His progress, however, in the study of the law was inconsiderable, and was completely interrupted by the coming on of mental derangement. In 1765, he formed that congenial acquaintance with Mrs. Unwin and her family, which so soothed and comforted him during the remaining years of his life; and he accompanied them in their removal to Olney, in Buckinghamshire, in the year 1767. In this town he lived many years, and here he became an author for the first time, at the advanced age of fifty. He died on the 5th of April, 1800.

PRINCIPAL WORKS.-The most admired of Cowper's poems. independently of his numerous graceful and lively small pieces, are

those entitled, "Truth," "Hope," "The Progress of Error," "Expostulation," "Conversation," and, above all, "The Task." CHARACTERISTIC SPIRIT AND STYLE."The nature of Cowper's works makes us peculiarly identify the poet and the man in perusing them. As an individual, he was retired and weaned from the vanities of the world; and, as an original writer, he left the ambitious and luxuriant subjects of fiction and passion for those of real life and simple nature, and for the development of his own earnest feelings, in behalf of moral and religious truth. His language has such a masculine idiomatic strength, and his manner, whether he rises into grace or falls into negligence, has so much plain and familiar freedom, that we read no poetry with a deeper conviction of its sentiments having come from the author's heart, and of the enthusiasm, in whatever he describes, having been unfeigned and unexaggerated. He impresses us with the idea of a being whose fine spirit had been long enough in the mixed society of the world to be polished by its intercourse, and yet withdrawn so soon as to retain an unworldly degree of purity and simplicity. He was advanced in years before he became an author; but his compositions display a tenderness of feeling so youthfully preserved, and even a vein of humour so far from being extinguished by his ascetic habits, that we can scarcely regret his not having written them at an earlier period of life: for he blends the determination of age with an exquisite and ingenuous sensibility; and though he sports very much with his subjects, yet, when he is in earnest, there is a gravity of long-felt conviction in his sentiments, which gives an uncommon ripeness of character to his poetry,

"It is due to Cowper to fix our regard on this unaffectedness and authenticity of his works, considered as representations of himself; because he forms a striking instance of genius writing the history of its own secluded feelings, reflections, and enjoyments, in a shape so interesting as to engage the imagination like a work of fiction. He has invented no character in fable, nor in the drama; but he has left a record of his own character, which forms not only an object of deep sympathy, but a subject for the study of human nature. His verse, it is true, considered as such a record, abounds with opposite traits of severity and gentleness, of playfulness and superstition, of solemnity and mirth, which appear almost anomalous; and there is undoubtedly sometimes an air of moody versatility in the extreme contrasts of his feelings. But looking to his poetry as an entire structure, it has a massive air of sincerity: it is founded in steadfast principles of belief; and, if we may prolong the architectural metaphor, though its arches may be sometimes gloomy, its tracery sportive, and its lights and

shadows grotesquely crossed, yet altogether it still forms a vast, various, and interesting monument of the builder's mind.

[In "The Task"] "he leads us abroad into his daily walks; he exhibits the landscapes which he was accustomed to contemplate, and the trains of thought in which he habitually indulged. No attempt is made to interest us in legendary fictions, or historical recollections connected with the ground over which he expatiates; all is plainness and reality; but we instantly recognise the true poet in the clearness, sweetness, and fidelity of his scenic draughts; in his power of giving novelty to what is common; and in the high relish, the exquisite enjoyment of rural sights and sounds which he communicates to the spirit. His eyes drink the rivers with delight." He excites an idea that almost amounts to sensation, of the freshness and delight of a rural walk, even when he leads us to the wasteful common which,

"O'ergrown with fern, and rough

With prickly gorse, that, shapeless and deform,
And dangerous to the touch, has yet its bloom,
And decks itself with ornaments of gold,
Yields no unpleasing ramble; there the turf
Smells fresh, and, rich in odoriferous herbs
And fungous fruits of earth, regales the sense
With luxury of unexpected sweets.'" 2

The Task, book i.

EXTRACTS FROM "THE TASK."

A LANDSCAPE 3

How oft, upon yon eminence,

our pace

Has slackened to a pause, and we have borne
The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,
While Admiration, feeding at the eye,

(1) An expression in one of his letters.

(2) Campbell. "Specimens," &c., p. 672.

(3) Campbell praises highly" the calm English character and familiar repose' of the above scene, which is, he adds "in the finest manner of Cowper, and unites all his accustomed fidelity and distinctness, with a softness and delicacy which are not always to be found in his specimens of the picturesque."

(4) Yon eminence-The scenery here depicted is that of the neighbourhood of Olney, Buckinghamshire.

And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene.

Thence with what pleasure have we just discerned
The distant plough slow moving, and beside

His labouring team, that swerved not from the track,
The sturdy swain, diminished to a boy!1

Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain.
Of spacious meads with cattle sprinkled o'er,
Conducts the eye along his sinuous course
Delighted. There, fast rooted in their bank,
Stand, never overlooked, our favourite elms,
That screen the herdsman's solitary hut;
While far beyond, and overthwart the stream,
That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale,
The sloping land recedes into the clouds;
Displaying on its varied side the grace

Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower,
Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells
Just undulates upon the listening ear,
Groves, heaths, and smoking villages, remote.

RURAL SOUNDS.

NOR rural sights alone, but rural sounds,
Exhilarate the spirit, and restore

The tone of languid nature. Mighty winds,
That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading wood
Of ancient growth, make music not unlike
The dash of ocean on his winding shore,
And lull the spirit while they fill the mind;
Unnumbered branches waving in the blast,
And all their leaves fast fluttering, all at once.
Nor less composure waits upon the roar
Of distant floods, or on the softer voice
Of neighbouring fountain, or of rills that slip
Through the cleft rock, and, chiming as they fall
Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at length
In matted grass, that, with a livelier green
Betrays the secret of their silent course.
Nature inanimate employs sweet sounds,

(1) Diminished to a boy

"Yon tall anchoring bark,

Diminished to her cock; her cock a buoy,

Almost too small for sight."-King Lear. (See p. 278.)

But animated nature sweeter still,

To soothe and satisfy the human ear.

Ten thousand warblers cheer the day, and one
The live-long night: nor these alone, whose notes
Nice-fingered art must emulate in vain,

But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime
In still-repeated circles, screaming loud,
The jay, the pie, and e'en the boding owl,
That hails the rising moon, have charms for me.
Sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh,
Yet heard in scenes where peace for ever reigns,
And only there, please highly for their sake.

SLAVERY.1

Or for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,

Might never reach me more. My ear is pained,
My soul is sick, with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,
It does not feel for man; the natural bond
Of brotherhood is severed as the flax,
That falls asunder at the touch of fire.
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin

Not coloured like his own; and, having power
To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, who had else,
Like kindred drops, been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And, worse than all, and most to be deplored
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,

Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat

(1) These lines were written at a time when the English colonies were cultivated by slaves-a state of things happily now at an end; but they so eloquently press the general principle, which is by no means obsolete, that they are

ed on that account.