From The Quarterly Review.

1. The Works of William Cowper; his Life, Letters, and Poems. Edited by the Rev. T. Grimshawe. 1 vol. 8vo. London,

1854.

2. The Works of William Cowper, compris ing his Poems, Correspondence, and Translations; with a Life of the Author by the Editor, Robert Southey. 8 vols. London, 1853–54.

3. Poetical Works of William Cowper. Edited by Robert Bell. 3 vols. London, 1854.

4. The Poetical Works of William Cowper. Edited by the Rev. R. A. Willmott. 1 vol. London, 1855.

ambiguous, and the jury did not agree to a verdict of acquittal without considerable deliberation. Though there was no evidence to show that Spencer Cowper was guilty, it seemed to be thought a sufficient ground for hesitation that it was impossible to demon

strate his innocence.

The second son of Spencer was the father of the poet. His mother was Anne Donne. The Cowpers were descended from a baronet of the time of James I.; but Miss Donne could trace her descent by four distinct lines from King Henry III. The poet alluded to this circumstance in the famous piece which he wrote upon receiving her picture :My boast is not that I deduce my birth From loins enthroned, and rulers of the earth;

But higher far my proud pretensions rise,-
The son of parents passed into the skies."

These parents lived at Great Berkhamstead of which parish Dr. Cowper was rector, and there William was born on the 15th of November (old style), 1731. The death of his

THERE is probably no English poet whose works are so frequently reprinted as those of Cowper. His literary excellence has won him thousands of readers who cared little for his piety, and his piety has recommended him to a large class of persons who would not have been attracted by his literary excellence alone. The perfect knowledge we have of the man, of his amiable disposition, and his pathetic story, have added to the charm of his writ-mother in 1737, when he was six years old, ings. His poetry and his life have reacted upon each other. If it is his verse which gives importance to his biography, his biography has increased the interest which attacnes to his verse.

brought him worse sorrow than the tears which he describes himself as shedding on the occusion, for it was the cause of his immediate removal to a school at Market Street, in Hertfordshire. The premature transition from her fostering care to the rude discipline of a crowd of boys would in any case have wounded his gentle spirit, but the trial was enormously aggravated by the barbarities of a ruffian whose delight was to torture him. "I well remember," writes the poet, “ being afraid to lift my eyes upon him higher than his knees, and I knew him better by his shoebuckles than any other part of his dress." The cruelty was not detected till it had been continued for a couple of years: the culprit was then expelled, and his victim was taken from the school. The ill-usage he had re

The grandfather of Cowper was the brother of the celebrated Lord Chancellor, and was himself one of the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas. The most memorable incident of his life was his trial for the murder of Miss Stout, a young Quaker lady who had conceived for him an ardent attachment. She lived at Hertford with her mother, who was the widow of a rich malster, and Spencer Cowper supped at their house when going the circuit as a barrister in March, 1699. A bed had been prepared for him, and, after Mrs. Stout had retired, her daughter ordered the maid to go and warm it. When the ser-ceived was not the only reason for the step. vant returned to the parlor the room was empty. Nothing more was seen of Miss Stout till she was found dead next morning in the river that runs through the town. The explanation given by Spencer Cowper was, that while the maid was absent he refused to sleep in the house, and proceeded straight to his lodgings. The young lady, it must be inferred, immediately went and drowned herself in a paroxysm of vexation. The summing up of the judge at the trial was strangely

Specks had appeared upon his eyes, ana threatened to spread. He was in consequence domiciled for another year with an eminent oculist. The spots did not yield to treatment, and when he was thirteen years of age he owed his recovery to a severe attack of small-pox. It is singular that this disease. which so frequently destroyed the sight, should have restored his to its pristine clearness.

In his tenth year he was sent to Westminster School. In his "Personal Narrative," of

the incidents which bore upon the formation With the benefits of Westminster he did not of his religious character, he said that if he escape a vice which is always common in so"never tasted true happiness there, he was cieties where the detection of a fault is fol at least equally unacquainted with its con-lowed by punishment. He became, according trary." By "true" he then meant spiritual to his own account, an adept in falsehood, and happiness. In any other sense of the term it was seldom guilty of a misdemeanor that he was a cheerful period, for he excelled in could not invent an apology capable of deceivgames, especially cricket and foot-ball, as ing the wisest. The power of deception dewell as in his studies; and whether he was in pends much on the amount of confidence rethe playground or the class, he had all the posed in the deceiver, and the gentle manners, enjoyment which attends upon success. When ingenuous countenance, and general good behe denounced public schools in his "Tirocin-havior of the boy had probably a larger share ium for their want of moral discipline, he in procuring a ready belief to his tales than yet paid an emphatic tribute to the pleasure enjoyed at them. His athletic prowess beguiled him into a strange idea. He conceived the fancy that, as he was strong and active, and had an even pulse, he, perhaps, might never die. He entertained the notion," with no small complacency," till some consumptive symptoms convinced him that he was mortal. These symptoms he concealed, for he thought that any bodily infirmity was a disgrace, and especially a consumption. His pride was to be manly.

any extraordinary proficiency to which he had attained in the arts of imposition. "As universal a practice," says Swift, "as lying is, and easy as it seems, I do not remember to have heard three good lies in all my conversation, even from those who were most celebrated in that faculty." This remark of an acute observer of human nature, that lies are generally as weak as they are wicked, is worthy to be treasured by men who fear no other consequences than discovery, though Swift fell into the fallacy of assuming that he had always detected the falsehoods, whereas those which were most ingenious may have been mistaken by him for truths.

While he was passing through the fifth form, Vincent Bourne, celebrated for his Latin poetry, was the usher. He was slovenly to the point of being disgusting, and as good- At the age of eighteen the classical enthu natured as he was dirty. The Duke of Rich-siast was removed from school, and after passmond once set fire to his greasy locks, and ing nine months at home was in 1749, sent, boxed his ears to put it out again. His in- full of his Greek and Latin authors, to the do ence rendered his accomplishments useless office of a London solicitor. He turned with to his pupils. "I lost," says Cowper, "more disgust from the dull and plodding business than I got by him, for he made me as idle as of the law, and the master to whom he was himself. He was so inattentive to his boys, articled allowed him to be as idle as he deand so indifferent whether they brought him sired. "I did actually," he wrote, "live three good or bad exercises, or none at all, that he years with Mr. Chapman, that is to say, I seemed determined, as he was the best, so to slept three years in his house; but I lived, be the last Latin poet of the Westminster that is to say, I spent my days, in Southamp line." The pupil certainly acquired none of ton Row." Here resided an indulgent unce, the master's skill in classic composition. The Ashley Cowper. He was so diminutive a perLatin verses of Cowper are not harmonious son that when, late in life, he wore a wnite in numbers, pure in expression, or even forci-hat lined with yellow, the poet said that if it ble in sentiment. He gained, however, as had been lined with pink he might have been much learning as is usually possessed by the gathered by mistake for a mushroom, and most forward schoolboy, and, imbued with the sent off in a basket. His kindness, worth, doctrines of the place, valued all persons ac- and sprightliness endeared him to his nephew; cording to their proficiency in his own pur- and dearer still were two daughters, one of suits. A little experience of the world taught whom married Sir Thomas Hesketh, and the him, he says, that there were other attain- other gave her affections to the truant lawments which would carry a man more hand-clerk. He had for his fellow-pupil the future somely through life than perpetually revolv- Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who was equally ing and expounding what Homer and Virgil beguiled by the attractions of the young had left behind them. ladies. He commonly accompanied his friend

posed to have been prompted by a real he wrote in his seventeenth year at Bath, occasion. In a few verses entitled "Disap-" on finding the heel of a shoe." It is chiefly pointment," and which exhibit more true feel- remarkable for displaying the precise style ng than any of his other pieces of the same date, he mourns his "lost mistress" and an old school friend, Sir William Russell, who had been recently drowned; but his anguish does not appear very poignant, and left no scar. His lament was composed in 1751, and in the following year he was lavishing his admiration upon a young lady at Greenwich, without any hope, it is true, that she could oecome Mrs. Cowper, but with too much fervor to be consistent with the notion that he cared any longer for Delia. A letter to her sister, Lady Hesketh, which bears the date of August, 1763, shows that it was then understood in the family that his affection was exunct, and that it was supposed he would miss no opportunity which occurred of bestowing it elsewhere. He informs her that ne is bound for Margate, and that he knows woat she expects to ensue ; but the shipwreck of his fortunes was at hand, and, clearly descrying what as yet was visible to no eye except his own, he warns her that a character such as his was not likely to be guilty of much fascination.

The time which Cowper snatched from indolence and pleasure was devoted to composition and the classics. So early had he acquired a keen relish for English literature that when he was only fourteen he read Milton, never an easy author, with rapturous delight:

"New to my taste, his Paradise surpass'd

The struggling efforts of my boyish tongue
To speak its excellence; I danced for joy.
I marvell'd much that, at so ripe an age
As twice seven years, his beauties had then
first

Engaged my wonder, and admiring still,
And still admiring, with regret supposed
The joy half lost because not sooner found."*
He "prized and studied" Cowley, though in
his manhood he was "reclaimed from the er-
roneous taste;" but both in childhood and
in mature years he was charmed with the
"Pilgrim's Progress," in which

"Sweet fiction and sweet truth alike prevail."t He commenced versifying at fourteen by translating an elegy of Tibullus. Nothing, however, has been preserved of an earlier date than a short piece in blank verse, which

*The Task," book iv.
"Tirocinium."

and turn of thought which he afterwards adopted in the mock-heroic portions of the "Task." Love, Dryden said, made every man, if not a poet, at least a rhymer. It only made Cowper the last. The political events of the time inspired him with a few halfpenny ballads, "two or three of which had the honor to become popular." He adds that his father before him excelled in this department of verse, and pointed out the best models to him. The patriotic effusions of the young Templar have been consigned to oblivion, and owed, we suspect, their short-lived success to the temporary interests excited by their topics. The poems he wrote during the first period of his authorship, which ended when he was thirty-one, are neither good in themselves nor give the slightest promise of future excellence. The thoughts are commonplace, the language bald, the verse without harmony. In the course of only nine stanzas which he penned on "Himself," the following words are coupled as rhymes— spirit, bear it; perter, smarter; do, so; shapes, relapse; foolish, polish. When he was twenty-eight he was still content with such similarity of sound as can be extractea out of rhetoric, Greek; coarse, worse; steer, care; go, you; near, character. Without spirit or polish, sterling matter or happy execution, the verses of Cowper seemed to indicate that, whatever else he might become, he could never be a poet.

The Connoisseur was edited by two of his schoolfellows, Colman and Thornton. All three were members of the "Nonsense Club," which consisted of seven men who had been educated at Westminster, and who dined together every Thursday. Cowper therefore naturally became a contributor to the Connoisseur, and in 1756 he furnished five numbers to the work. They are palpable imitations of the lighter parts of the Spectator, and, though destitute of nice discrimination of character and refinement of satire, are not without casual touches of humor. His third essay is "On keeping a Secret ;" and so deeply was he impressed by his own lucubrations that he never divulged a secret afterwards. He did not always desire that his friends should practise the same reserve towards him; for years later he asked Mr. Newton to