that admirable piece of humour 'John Gilpin.' The greater part of the former was completed in February 1784, and in October it was sent to press. The accounts which are given of his situation at this period afford a refreshing contrast to the details which describe his condition both in the earlier and later portions of his existence. In the society of a few select friends he now divided his time between the pleasures of conversation and the gently exciting labour of composition. His mind thus gradually assumed a more cheerful cast, and was, perhaps, in the healthiest state which it was capable of attaining.

Shortly after the completion of the above named works he began the translation of Homer, a production which, whatever merit it possesses, was better adapted to furnish the poet with amusement than add to his popularity. To be admired in his own naked sublimity, Homer must be read by the scholar, and in his own language; to engage the attention of readers of a different description he must be changed in form and spirit as well as language.

In 1787, a slight attack of his old complaint made it necessary that he should intermit his pursuits, but it passed off without seriously affecting him, and he shortly after resumed his work of translating, which was completed on the 25th August, 1790. He was employed about the same time on an edition of Milton, and soon after became acquainted with his well-known biographer, Mr. Hayley, of whom he uniformly spoke with the warmest affection.

Under these circumstances, his spirits continued to hold good till the year 1794, when his mind began rapidly to sink into its most melancholy state of despondency. The health of his watchful friend, Mrs. Unwin, had also undergone an alarming change, and the united weight of time and sickness had brought her to the last stage of helpless and imbecile old age. Mr. Hayley and his other affectionate acquaintances continued to visit him and use every means to restore his health, but their solicitude wa: vain, and he continued sunk in a melancholy which could neither be removed nor alleviated. It was at

length determined to try the experiment of a change of air, and his amiable relative, the Rev. Dr. Johnson, took upon himself the charge of conducting him into Norfolk. While residing at Dunham Lodge, and afterwards at Mundsley, his spirits with slight exceptions continued in the same state, and though an occasional glimpse of hope now and then encouraged his desponding friends, they at length saw the gradual and certain approaches of decay under the must distressing circumstances in which death can visit an intellectual and reasoning being. Cowper had continued to compose several minor pieces of poetry, and to employ himself occasionally in reading during some time past, but in January, 1800, his strength began rapidly to decline, and on the 25th of April of the same year, he yielded up his gentle and suffering spirit.

Morality never found in genius a more devoted advocate than Cowper, nor has moral wisdom, in its plain and severe precepts, been ever more successfully combined with the delicate spirit of poetry than in his works. The austerity of tone in which virtue arraigns the conscience is so strongly in contrast with the soft and lulling voice of fancy, that we rarely expect to see them in harmony. Even when the muses were worshipped as divinities, and men received laws and religion from their lips, they only gained their authority by veiling themselves in the rich robes of ancient fable, and submitting the pure and essential glory of truth, to creations in which men might find their passions as well as their spirit interested. Their lessons were taught by the side of magic fountains, or in the green bowers of leafy solitudes they were heard amid the singing of birds, the sighing of the lover's lute, and the mystic voices of a thousand attendant ministers of delight. Thus they were worshipped because they gave new beauty to the world by the light they breathed upon its surface, and they were hearkened to because they adapted themselves as well to the weakness as to the good of man's mind; and, in telling of the majesty of nature, and of the might

that lies hidden in the bosom of truth, invested him with the attributes of its divinity. The moral, didactic verses of antiquity are almost too plain and destitute of grace to be received as pretty. The writings of Lucretius are philosophical, and have, therefore, a splendour about them which belongs to a source different to that from which the ethical poet derives his materials of ornament. It is in modern times only that morality, as such, has been successfully invested with the grace of poetry. But extensive as has been the popularity of the writers, who have succeeded in this species of composition, their number is less than that of any other class. Nor is it difficult to trace the causes of this circumstance. Poetry naturally deals in dreams and shadows, which, bright and faithful images of reality as they may be, are still but dreams and shadows. -Let it take only the actual substance of thingsthe present and living forms of the earth uninvested with the sunny and glorifying atmosphere of imagination-and it loses the property which makes it poetry. A mind, therefore, which is unendowed with that strange faculty by which the airy nothingnesses of an ideal world are moulded into form-or with that power, equally strange, by which it can sublimate the things of earth, till they make a part of its own ethereal creation--an intellect ungifted with these faculties can never possess the proper materials of poetry. But it need not be said that the mind they inspire is not likely to employ itself on subjects incapable of being invested with the charm which it can bestow on others more adapted to its endowments; nor need it scarcely more to be observed, that a simple lesson of morality is not a subject or which such a mind is naturally likely to exert its powers. Whatever is plain and obvious to honest reason-whatever has been matter of instruction for centuries, and is of so fixed a character that it can neither be changed nor modified by imagination, can only be made a part of poetry by incorporation with matter móre shadowy and ethereal, and more completely under the dominion of the poet's mind.

And here again we find an obstacle to the successful production of ethical poetry. Although it is very possible for an imaginative writer to blend moral precepts with his inventions, it is, it must be confessed, far more agreeable to the true and proper nature of poetry, to teach virtue and inculcate its sublime truths, by an appeal from the imagination to the imagination -by presenting characters already made beautiful by the action of noble principle, instead of naked principles out of which to invent the characters. And so powerful, indeed, is the action of the imagination where it exists, that it will seldom suffer the mind to operate independently of its influence. It takes possession of the thoughts, whether they spring from the head or the heartwhether they are born in reason or passion, and it is only when the poet has a singular self-possession-a rare union of poetical feeling with the energy of cool thought, that he willingly and deliberately subjects his mind to the composition of moral verse.

Among the few, the very few, who have possessed that gift of a spirit full of the sweetness and the music of poetry, with this pure morality of purpose, is Cowper. The mind of this admirable writer was marked with the genuine traits which distinguish a poetical from other minds. He is, it is true, not to be compared with the great masters of the art, whose lofty and creative imaginations place them in a sphere of their own, but he had a power of collecting the scenes and harmonies of nature into the focus of his own heart, and of embuing them there with light and grace. He had an intensity and delicacy of feeling which made him perceive what is most beautiful in the complicated character of humanity, and he had that intuitive sense of the mind's action, which enabled him to present to others the objects and sentiments which influence with the greatest strength. By these qualities of his intellect, by the tenderness of his heart, and the extreme susceptibility of his nature, he was possessed of all the qualities, with the exception of a powerful imagina tion, which form the character of a p.s; and in

being denied the stronger excitements of fancy, he seems to have been formed by Providence to produce the works he composed. He was endowed with all the powers which a poet could want who was to be the moralist of the world-the reprover, but not the satirist, of men-the teacher of simple truths, which were to be rendered gracious without endangering their simplicity.