cumstances, often mismanaged by his friends and by himself, and retained so long in existence chiefly by his profound sense of religion, by the force of a most masculine understanding, and by one of the best bodily constitutions that poet ever possessed. At this last we especially wonder. He lived seventy years in that atmosphere of misery; and not only lived, but wrote thousands of his most humorous, refined, and beautiful letters, translated into stern clear verse the two masterpieces of Grecian poetry, and created a mass of original song as remarkable for its healthy tone as for its richness, vigour, simplicity, and freedom. Truly William Cowper was still more marvellous in mind than he was mild and gentle in spirit." Through the influence of Hayley with the Prime Minister, Pitt, a pension of three hundred a year was conferred upon Cowper in 1795, at the same time that a pension of a similar amount was bestowed upon another eminent Christian advocate, Dr. Campbell, author of “A Dissertation on Miracles," in reply to Hume. Had this pension come to Cowper earlier, it would have relieved him of much anxiety and of much unpleasantness, but now he was too deeply sunk in melancholy to enable him to appreciate the boon. Dr. Willis was sent by Lord Thurlow to prescribe for the poet, but the remedies that he suggested were ineffectual to work a cure, or even an alleviation of the symptoms. Cowper was past the power of physicians. A young clergyman named Johnson, a distant relative of the poet's, and one with whom he had corresponded in happier days, when he used to hail him as "Johnny of Norfolk," determined, with the approval of Cowper's friends and relatives, to devote himself to the care of the poet. It was resolved at once to remove him from the house at Weston, where Mrs. Unwin considering herself as mistress, tyrannised over the poet with all the petty humours of a peevish invalid. The poet was conveyed with Mrs. Unwin into Norfolk. They made a three days' journey through Eaton and Cambridge-where the celebrated Baptist preacher, Robert Hall, subject, like Cowper, to attacks of mental aberration, was then living-to Dereham and North Tuddenham. After a short stay at each of these places Cowper was taken to East Dereham, close to which was Yaxham, a living held by Johnson. At East Dereham the poet lost sight of the melancholy winding Ouse, which, first at Huntingdon, then at Olney, had been familiar to his eyes for thirty years. With the exception of an occasional visit to Maudsley, for the purpose of trying the effect of sea-air on his health, Cowper remained at East Dereham for the few sad remaining years of his life. In 1797 Mrs. Unwin died, but he seemed hardly to be conscious of her decease; and although he had daily in a mechanical manner visited her room to listen to the reading of the Scriptures for an hour, yet he appeared scarcely to note that this customary formality had ended, and that she who had been his constant companion for thirty years was no longer visible to his eyes. He seemed to have missed, more than his beloved companion, his old home at Weston, on his departure from which he wrote with a pencil on the back of a window-shutter the lines "Farewell, dear scenes, for ever closed to me, Oh, for what sorrow do I now exchange you." In the July of 1798 he received a visit from the dowager Lady Spencer to whom he had dedicated his translation of the Odyssey, and who came now to see him from a desire to discover whether or not there was anything he particularly wanted, by the bestowal of which she might alleviate his sad condition. She had previously sent him from Rome a present of some exquisite engravings by Flaxman of subjects taken from the Odyssey. This lady was the mother of the Duchess of Devonshire, the disappearance of whose picture by Gainsborough caused recently so much excitement, and from her munificence, her firm principles, and her accomplishments she was worthy of a kinship with that ducal house, the members of which since the days when brave Dame Bess of Hardwicke gave her hand to that gallant gentleman William Cavendish, have ever displayed an inflexible steadiness of principle, and a cultivated liberality of mind. In the present representatives of that illustrious family are to be found the same lofty characteristics for which all their ancestors have been distinguished. The present Duke of Devonshire, who obtained as a student the highest honours that the University of Cambridge has ever conferred upon any scholar, may be said to be the living embodiment of the genius of culture, while his son the Marquis of Hartington, who, a calm thinker and an acute discerner of the course of events, is never deceived by political or socal phantasms, may be described as the living embodiment of the genius of common sense. What has been said then of Lady Spencer by Cowper may fitly be said of each of the living representatives of the house of Cavendish with which she became connected, that she was one of the first persons in the world in point of character and accomplishments." When in a lucid interval during the years of insanity that marked the close of Swift's life, a portion of "The Tale of a Tub" was read to him, he exclaimed in a pitiful tone as he burst into tears, “What a genius I had when I wrote that." Selections from the books that Cowper had formerly written were read over to him, but he seemed to manifest no interest in them. His condition resembled in some degree that of the poor demented King George III., who ruled over England in the time of Cowper, and who in a brief interval of sanity, as Thackeray so touchingly describes, was heard praying pathetically for the restoration of that reason of which he had been deprived. Cowper's last poem was "The Castaway," a poem, it is true, suggested by an incident related in Anson's Voyages, but which may be fitly described, as in its title, emblematical of the poet's own state. When asked one day by a friend how he felt, "Feel," the miserable man exclaimed, "I feel unutterably wretched." During the concluding months of his life he scarcely uttered a word. He was quiet, kind, and gentle to the end, but wore upon his countenance an expression of perpetual and profound sorrow. The last words that he uttered were when a cordial was pressed to his lips, "What does it matter!" an exclamation that seems to be symbolical of the entire indifference to all earthly concerns which during the latter period of his life he had manifested. On April 25th, in the year 1800, his troubled spirit passed away at East Dereham, Norfolk. "Who would upon the rack of this rough world stretch him out longer." Maniac angel, thy mental agony has departed, and only thy angelic soul remains. Gifted martyr, thy mental tortures have ceased, and only the pure flame of thy genius survives. Thou art no more a poor troubled demoniac wandering amongst earthly tombs and fettered by mortal shackles. Thou hast indeed burst thy galling chains, deserted thy funeral dwelling place, and "clothed" with the white robe of the redeemed, thou sittest "in thy right mind" at thy pitying Master's feet. Thou passedst from the narrow, winding Ouse of Buckinghamshire to the more expanded surfaces of water known as "broads" in Norfolk, and now thou hast been wafted to that boundless but calm ocean of eternity where, as thou hast said with Garth, "tempests never break nor billows roar." Such transitions are emblematical of the progress of human life and of human knowledge. The confined seclusion and the imperfect perception of youth gradually yield to the wider interests and the broader experiences of manhood, until at last the spirit freed from the restraints of the flesh is no longer vexed and hampered by partial exercises of power and by partial glimpses of truth, but launched upon that eternal ocean that has "no bounds," breathes a clearer, calmer air unlimited by any such mocking visible horizon as here on earth renders our knowledge but a knowledge in part, and our vision but a vision through a glass darkly. In the noble lines with which "The Task" concludes, the kind of life and of death that he would have desired for himself is described. His life in its innocency and religious peacefulness did to a great extent resemble the picture in words that he had drawn, but his death was not so rapid in its advent, so calm or so happy as he had wished. No euthanasia was granted to him. "So life glides smoothly and by stealth away, Beneath the turf that I have often trod." In the churchyard of East Dereham Cowper was buried. Lady Hesketh erected a tablet to his memory, and Hayley wrote his epitaph, in the concluding lines of which he declares with truth that "his virtues formed the magic of his song." In the same year as that in which Cowper died expired also another eminent Christian advocate, Dr. Blair, of whom Cowper in one of his letters speaks in a commendatory strain; young Hayley, a youth that Cowper loved; Mrs. Montague, author of "An Essay on the Genius of Shakespear," a learned friend and one of the chief members of that Blue Stocking Club to which in her poem of Bas Bleu, Hannah More refers, and from which the Irish poet Moore obtained a name for one of his fragmentary poems; and lastly as if to point the moral of Cowper's lines in the "Task" on the woman " that had renounced her sex's honour," the notorious Mrs. Robinson, whose literary efforts entitled "Legitimate Poems,' effusions of that Della Cruscan school that Gifford satirised in the Baviad and Mæviad, would hardly have preserved her name, had not her sin and her sorrows conferred on her a more questionable notoriety. Amongst the names that occur in connection with the life or which are celebrated in the writings of Cowper over and above those that have been already alluded to, may be mentioned the following: Lord Cowper, to whom Cowper's translation of the Iliad was dedicated; Lord Dartmouth, who supplied the poet with books; Dr. Darwin, author of "The Loves of the Plants;" Buchanan, Venn, author of "The Complete Duty of Man;" Berridge, the eccentric vicar of Everton, Bedfordshire; Anne Bodham ("Rose") his cousin, by whom his mother's picture was sent to Cowper; Mrs. Courtenay (“Catherina," "Lady Frog"); Lady Throckmorton ("Maria"); the beautiful Miss Gunnings, "Two nymphs adorned with every grace;" Mrs. Greville, Abbot the painter, by whom a portrait of the poet was painted, "Abbot is painting me so true;" Sir J. Reynolds the painter, one, as Cowper says, "whose art gives perpetuity to time;" Sir T. Lawrence, the painter, by whom a portrait of Cowper was painted; Lord Carrington, Lord Spencer, Lady Bagot, Lord Howard, Mrs. King, Chester, Brown, the landscape gardener; Howard the philanthropist, whom the poet lauds; Bacon the sculptor, to whom the poet wrote a sonnet; Mrs. Fanshawe, Richardson, author of "Clarissa Harlowe;" Bagot, Greathed, Parke, Van Lier, Scott, author of the "Commentary on the Bible;" Small, Dr. Cogswell, Mrs. Catlett, Towley, a clergyman who married Mrs. Unwin's daughter; Mrs. Johnson ("Kitty,") Elizabeth Bently, the self-taught poetess; and Count Gravina. Few men had more numerous and more sincere friends. Cowper's highest poetical effort is undoubtedly "The Task." In this poem he attains a very exalted range of song, proclaims a high Christian morality, and lashes vice with a vigour that could hardly have been looked for in the lines of a gentle, shy recluse. Amongst his most popular smaller pieces may be mentioned "John Gilpin,” “Boadicea,” "On the receipt of my Mother's Picture," and "On the loss of the Royal George." Cowper produced a considerable number of less known, short, fragmentary poems, writing many of his communications to friends in verse. His letters to his friends are charming both as regards the matter and the manner of them. They have all the elegance of the letters of Pope with a simple kindliness and an absence of artificiality, of which all the works of Pope are destitute. Cowper composed many hymns. He contributed sixty-eight to the |