way under the constant pressure of anxiety. Mr. Johnson, who had taken orders, and resided at East Dereham, in Norfolk, then took charge of his unhappy relation; removed him and Mrs. Unwin into his own neighbourhood, and watched over their decline with the most unwearied and judicious tenderness. But little could now be done to give Cowper pleasure. The pathetic poem, "To Mary," is supposed by Mr. Hayley to have been the last thing written by him before quitting Weston; and the only original verses which he composed afterwards were some Latin lines, which he translated into English, on the appearance of some ice islands in the German Sea, and the touch

ing poem called the " Cast-away," founded on the

loss of a man overboard in Anson's voyage, and alluding, in an affecting strain, to his own unfortunate condition. After his departure from Weston, he, who had been so diligent a correspondent, only wrote three or four letters; nor could he be excited to converse by the visits even of his most intimate friends, as Mr. Rose and Sir John Throckmorton. In January, 1800, his final illness, which was dropsy, commenced. He died April 25th, in the same year; nor to the last did one gleam of hope break through the darkness which had surrounded him for twentyseven years.

It was Cowper's especial merit, as a poet, to cultivate simplicity and nature. He set the example of throwing aside conventional affectations and unmeaning pomp of diction, and in consideration of this great service may well be pardoned for occasionally incurring the opposite fault of being tame and prosaic. His genius was truly original: all his writings, whether moral, satirical, or descriptive, bear the legible impress of his own peculiar constitution of mind and habits of thinking. His minor and occasional poems are very happy, for his imagination could extract a

deep and beautiful moral from slight occurrences, which commonly pass unnoticed in the bustle of life. Many of his letters are published in Hayley's Life of Cowper; and these are embodied with the Private Correspondence afterwards given to the world by Mr. Johnson, in the edition of Cowper's works by Mr. Grimshawe. As a letter writer Cowper appears to us to be unequalled in the English language. His correspondence is the genuine intercourse of friend with friend; full of wit and humour, but a humour that never vents itself in the depreciation of others; and abounding in passages of graver beauty, expressed in the most easy, yet elegant and correct language. When once a man knows that his letters are admired, he is in great danger of writing for admiration. Cowper was aware of this, and occasionally alludes to the temptation in lively terms. "I love praise dearly, especially from the judicious, and those who have so much delicacy themselves as not to offend mine in giving it. But then I found this consequence attending, or likely to attend, the eulogium you bestowed. If my friend thought me witty before, he shall think me ten times more witty hereafter; where I joked once, I will joke five times; and for every sensible remark, I will send him a dozen. Now this foolish vanity would have spoiled me quite, and have made me as disgusting a letter writer as Pope, who seems to have thought that unless a sentence was well turned, and every sentence pointed with some conceit, it was not worth the carriage. I was willing, therefore, to wait until the impression that your commendation had made on the foolish part of me was worn off, that I might scribble away as usual, and write my uppermost thoughts, and those only." (June 8, 1780. To the Rev. W. Unwin.) No one ever avoided this danger better. It is strange and wonderful that these compositions,

which bear the stamp of so much cheerfulness and benevolence, should have been written, most of them, in his deepest gloom, and avowedly for the purpose of withdrawing his thoughts from his own misery.

Ir was the fortune of this eminent philosopher, in the course of a long, uncompromising advocacy of his own views of truth, to become prominently engaged in controversy on those two great sources of discord, religion and politics. He was grossly maltreated by those who disapproved of his doctrines; and, as the natural consequence, he was regarded with warm, not to say immoderate, admiration by his friends. His opinions, however, were the result of patient inquiry, instituted and pursued, as we believe, with a sincere desire to arrive at truth; and therefore he is entitled to be treated with respect, even by those who think his opinions of pernicious tendency. A good life of such a man can hardly satisfy both friends and enemies. It is, however, as a man of science, not as a party disputant, that Priestley is entitled to a place here; and we shall therefore hold ourselves excused from entering at length into his political or theological controversies.

JOSEPH PRIESTLEY was born at Fieldhead, near

VOL. IV.

H

Leeds, March 13, 1733, O. S. His father was of middle rank, engaged in the woollen manufactures of the neighbourhood. His mother died while he was still a child: but this loss was alleviated by the kindness of his paternal aunt, who undertook the care of his education from the time that he was nine years old. He underwent some disadvantage, in being shifted about from one tutor to another; but being of a studious turn, he made considerable progress in the study of ancient and modern languages, Asiatic as well as European, of mathematics, metaphysics, and other branches of learning; so that he was found to be unusually well informed, on his admission at the Dissenting Academy at Daventry, in 1752. His father and his aunt were Calvinistic Dissenters, and Priestley was brought up in an unusually strict observance of all the external duties of religion. He acknowledges in his Memoirs an obligation to this course of life, as having early given him a serious turn of mind, but without recommending a similar course for general adoption. As was natural, he imbibed the principles of Calvinism; and suffered at one time severe uneasiness, because he could not realise in his mind those feelings which he had been taught to consider as the index of salvation. This we mention, because it shows that his early prepossessions were diametrically opposed to that system of religion to which he ultimately worked his way.

For three years Priestley continued at Daventry, labouring sedulously in studying to qualify himself for the ministry. At the end of that time, he accepted an invitation to become assistant preacher to a dissenting congregation at Needham Market near Ipswich. His residence there, a period of three years more, was one of considerable want and difficulty. His stipulated salary amounted only to 40l. and was so ill paid, that his receipts generally fell short of 30%.: insomuch that, without occasional assistance, procured from different