"Nor he, who for the bane of thousands born,

Built God a church and laughed his word to scorn."

Moreover, it might be permitted to religious poets to overstep somewhat in attacking an enemy of Christianity. Cowper was, in the main, rather intolerant; he must have written under the dictation of the bigoted and superstitious Mrs. Unwin, whose scruples were of a narrow class; he suffers a real inclination to controversy to transpire through his religious subjects.

The detached poems of Cowper are remarkable for their ease, invention, and vigour. Not but that vulgar expressions occasionally escape him, and even some conceits in rather bad taste, but the verses which he composed on the day when he received the portrait of his mother are irreproachable. They display the purest and most affecting language of filial piety, and of the recollections of infancy.

"Oh that those lips had language! Life has passed
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine-thy own sweet smiles I see,
The same, that oft in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else, how distinct they say,
'Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!'
The meek intelligence of those dear eyes
(Blest be the art that can immortalize,
The art that baffles time's tyrannic claim
To quench it) here shines on me still the same.
Faithful remembrancer of one so dear,

Oh welcome guest, though unexpected here!
Who biddest me honour, with an artless tongue
Affectionate, a mother lost so long.

I will obey not willingly alone,

But gladly, as the precept were her own:

And while that face renews my filial grief,
Fancy shall weave a charm for my relief,
Shall steep me in Elysian reverie,

A momentary dream that thou art she.

My mother! when I learned that thou wast dead,
Say wast thou conscious of the tears I shed?

Perhaps thou gavest me unseen a kiss ;

Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss-
Ah! that maternal smile, it answers-yes."

But I must stop here; it is an easier task to sympathize with the poet, than to express at second hand all which his amiable sensibility inspires.

I will only say one word more of Cowper; it will relate to the translation of the Iliad. It is more literal, but not more faithful than that of Pope. With the exception of some passages vigorously translated, Homer would not be able to recognise himself again, and would be tempted to believe the whole a parody. His magnificence and his poetical simplicity are equally lost. It reminds us of the Dutch painter, who aspired to supply a faithful idea of Apelles, while unfortunately the model was still in existence.

"Trois milles ans ont passé sur la cendre de Homere,

Et depuis trois milles ans, Homere respecté,

Est jeune encore de gloire et d'immortalité."

M. J. CHENIER.

Of all the English poets, the individual who has shown himself the most of a Greek in his

Greek in his verses,

inspired at once by the choice of the subject, and by classical associations, is Glover, the author of "Leonidas." Mason, the author of the "English

Garden," was, also, very happily embued with the spirit of the models of antiquity; but these two names remind us of the reign of George II., and of a class of literati with whom Cowper has very little analogy. His biographer, Hayley, who survived him, belonged rather to the school of Mason than to that of the poet of Ferney; but Hayley, is now-a-days better known by his respectful friendship for Cowper, than by his own productions. Some of his sonnets, however, express grand, ingenious, or tender thoughts with dignity.

LETTER LXII.

TO M. V. GUEBIN.

IN 1758, when the imitators of Pope's school continued to fatigue the ears by the monotony of a hundred poetical common places, dressed up in a hundred modes, a coterie, a suddenly usurped ephemeral vogue, by substituting the affectation and conceits of Italian literature, degenerated by celebrating platonic love, sentimental friendship, and a pretended enthusiasm for nature, for the antithesis and elegant conciseness of the classical models. The coterie Della Crusca was an associa

tion of beaux esprits and equivocal females, metamorphosed into the shepherds and shepherdesses of saloons.

"Formés sur la brillant modele

De ces bergers galans qu'a chante Fontenelle."

Like Don Quixote and Sancho, adopting the names of Quichoti and Pancino, Mr. Merry signed Della Crusca; Mrs. Robinson, Laura Maria; Mrs. Piozzi, Anna Matilda, Adney Yenda; another Carlos, &c. Distributing afterwards their various parts, one was to perform Horace, and proved his title by epistles to his friends, and odes to the moon; the other became an Anacreon, and wrote stanzas to Delia; Mrs. Robinson was surnamed the English Sappho. This free academy was founded at Florence, where chance had brought together Mr. Merry, Mrs. Piozzi, and Mrs. Robinson.

Mr. Merry appertained to a family of magistrates; he was, at first, intended for the bar, but afterwards having purchased a commission, and succeeding to an independent fortune, he took up his residence in Italy, after having made the tour of the divers capitals of Europe. Retained, as it is said, at Florence by love, he devoted himself, while there, to the study of the Italian language, and was received as a member of the celebrated academy of Della Crusca, the name of which, with singular poetic pedantry, he adopted.

Mrs. Piozzi had become the wife by a first marriage of a rich brewer, Mr. Thrale, whose house

the famous Dr. S. Johnson much frequented. At the death of her husband, she retired to Bath, and kept up a correspondence with her literary friend; but they quarrelled on his disapproval of her marriage with Piozzi, a music master, whom Mrs. Piozzi carried with her to Florence. She there became acquainted with the female adventurer, Mrs. Robinson, who, at first, in the character of an agreeable courtezan, and afterwards in that of a seducing actress, had captivated, by turns, a royal prince and the man of the people, the famous Fox, a conquest not less illustrious.

This coterie made a collection of its verses, to which Mrs. Piozzi wrote the preface; and shortly after these fugitive pieces were confided in detail to the literary journals of London, where the Anacreons and Sapphos found complaisant puffers. The adventure of the Metromanie was revived: Anna Matilda, in the character of an invisible muse, inspired by her verses alone some unknown author with a tender passion, which, for a considerable time, exhausted itself in reciprocal sonnets.

It must be confessed, that in the midst of the affectation of Mrs. Piozzi and Robinson, some harmonious couplets and ingenious thoughts are met with; some sentiments tolerably delicate, and expressed in a graceful manner; but in the height of the greatest intoxication of all these little successes, a satirical voice was suddenly heard that of Mr. Gifford-which devoted to ridicule all the poetry of the new Parnassus without exception. The Baviad, followed by the