accomplished and ingenious dramatist, essayist, and autobiographer. There was Thurlow, afterwards Lord Chancellor, who, if, according to Fox, "no one ever was so wise as he looked," was nevertheless an able lawyer, a sensible judge, and a strong-minded man. There was Colman, a name dear to all the lovers of laughter, and who might be called a halfCowper, possessed of all his lighter, although of none of his graver powers. There was Impey, afterwards so conspicuous in the history of India, and whose abilities, if not his integrity, were undeniable. And there was a man, perhaps for native power, and certainly for extensive reputation, superior to them all, on whom, when he had mounted the highest pinnacle of wealth, influence, and renown, fell suddenly the invective of Burke, like the thunder-winged eagle of Jove, yet who survived the shock of an attack such as afterwards roused the whole of Europe to arms, and has left a splendid, albeit dubious, fame, like a blood-red sunset, behind him-Warren Hastings. Our readers cannot have forgotten the fine use to which Mrs Johnstone has turned the conjunction of such names as Thurlow, Cowper, and Hastings, in her exquisite story, entitled The Three Westminster Boys.

When Cowper had reached his eighteenth year, this delightful chapter of his life-perhaps the only one which was not deeply chequered-came to a close. He left Westminster

school, he says, well furnished with grammatical knowledge, but as ignorant of all kinds of religion as the satchel on his back. And yet he had been greatly struck by the ceremony of confirmation, as performed in school by Dr Nicholls, and had after it attempted, for the first time, to pray in secret. But that early goodness had been like the early dew or the morning cloud; and he next betook himself to a scene, where the last drops of it were in danger of being scorched up. He became a lawyer, and was articled for three years to a Mr Chapman, at whose house, too, he lived. How drearily this period must have passed away! Yet we doubt not that these years might have done Cowper much valuable service, and that the study of law, if it did not tend to kindle his devotional fervour, or "remind him of one single Christian duty," might have sharpened his intellect, and increased that strength and acute

ness which are no less remarkable in his compositions than their fancy and fire. But he took little interest in the study. One precious day he was permitted to call his own-the Sabbath and that he uniformly spent (as well as parts of most of his week-days) at his aunt's, in Southampton Row, where, with his amiable female cousins (daughters of Ashley Cowper) he on Sundays attended church; and on week-days was found often along with Thurlow, who had become a clerk in the same office, "giggling and making giggle." The motive of his friends in sending him to a solicitor's office was, because they could most easily provide for him in that profession. He was not willing, it would seem, to return home after leaving school, probably because his father had married a second time. He had no inclination for the Church, and no turn for business, and hence he had passively resigned himself to the will of his relations; and even before he was articled to Mr Chapman he had been entered pro formâ at the Middle Temple.

There, on leaving the solicitor's office, in his 21st year, he took up his solitary lodgings. It was in the year 1752. And there the black malady, destined to be the curse of his life, made the first of its many violent attacks. He was struck, it would seem, all of a sudden, with an extreme depression of spirits. He lost all relish for his former studies. He lay down each night in horror, and arose in despair. While in this pitiable plight he met accidentally with Herbert's "Temple." The reading of this delightful poem did not altogether remove, but it much alleviated, his sufferings. The sea still ran high, but the wind abated. Herbert's voice came to him, in the valley of that shadow, even as there came to Christian, in the "Pilgrim," when in the depth of the same gloomy glen, "the voice of a man going before him, and saying, 'Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me; and, like him, he was somewhat comforted, because "he gathered that some who fear God had been in that valley as well as himself." At the bidding of a relation, however, he threw the book aside, and once more, and for a whole year, felt himself walking alone, in unutterable wretchedness, and

in profound silence, for he could not now either echo the prayers of others or pray himself. At last, indeed, his proud heart was humbled, and he began to pray. He was recommended then to a change of scene, and went down to visit some of his friends at Southampton. Soon after his arrival, at a place called Freemantle, about a mile from the town, in a clear and calm morning, the sun shining on the sea, and on the beautiful glades of the New Forest, the cloud of his melancholy disappeared as rapidly as it had gathered; it was as if" another sun had been kindled that instant in the heavens to dispel sadness;" his heart leaped for joy, and tears of transport came into his eyes. On his return to London, however, Satan, he says, tempted him to believe that this deliverance had been produced simply by change of scene, and was, like the melancholy which preceded it, a mockery and delusion; so he burned a set of prayers he had composed, and plunged into a round of diversion and pleasure to drown the memory of both.

On the 14th of June 1754, he was called to the bar. It is certain, however, that he had paid very little attention to his legal studies, although his heart was already beginning to heave with the ambition of becoming a wit and a poet. Two years later he lost his father, if the removal of one whom he seldom saw, and who had been long dead to him, could be called a loss. Still it cost him a bitter pang to repair in haste to his native place, at the news of his illness, to find him dead; to follow his last parent to the grave, and as he left the scene, to "sigh a long adieu to woods and fields," which never appeared so beautiful as when he was leaving them to return no more. Three years after this event, he removed from the Middle to the Inner Temple, and purchased chambers there. He was about this time made a Commissioner of Bankrupts; but, according to one of his biographers, "was more employed with literature than with law, and more with love than with literature." The object of his attachment was Theodora Jane, second daughter of his uncle, Ashley Cowper. She is described as a person of beauty, accomplishments, and more than ordinary understanding. The attachment was warmly returned, and would have been consummated in mar

riage, had not, first, his circumstances been so precarious, and had not, in the second place, the father objected to the match, on the ostensible ground that the parties were too nearly related in law. Probably his real reason was, that he knew Cowper's hereditary tendency to insanity. The cousins, however, continued to love, although the father's will forbade any farther intercourse, and the after incidents in Cowper's sad story put their marriage entirely out of the question. He vented his anguish in plaintive verse, addressed to a sister of hers, who, as Lady Hesketh, was destined to play an important part in his history on an after day. Theodora cherished his memory-long and carefully preserved the copies of poems he had given her, and is suspected of having done him effective pecuniary service at a future period of his life. That this disappointment produced Cowper's malady, is not true-for that unquestionably lay in the blood-but that it, along with many other untoward circumstances, increased its virulence, seems certain. Alas!

"The course of true love never did run smooth,”

and even although it had, and the two true and warm hearts had become one, the calm might only have been temporary— "The torrent's smoothness, ere it dash below "—

and what a miserable aggravation to his malady would the fact of his marriage have been!

Cowper had, as early as fourteen, been a "dabbler in verse." He began with a translation of an elegy of Tibullus. When seventeen he wrote an imitation of the "Splendid Shilling," on finding the heel of a shoe. At the Temple he spent much of his time in inditing both verse and prose, most of which he gave away to the help of less gifted and needier scribes, who published them with their own names. He became at this time a member of the Nonsense Club, which was composed of seven Westminster men, who dined together every Thursday. It included several of those we have already named, with one or two remarkable additions. But none of them did Cowper love so well as Joseph Hill-afterwards characterised by him as

"An honest man, close-button'd to the chin,

Broad cloth without, and a warm heart within."

Hill was at once a lawyer and a lover of letters, an amusing companion, and a steadfast friend. He wrought hard in his chambers all the week, and on Saturdays might be seen "reading upon sunshiny banks, and contemplating the clouds as he lay on his back." This was the very man after Cowper's own heart; and deep, and clear, and constant, and embalmed at last in energetic verse, was their friendship.

During these years Cowper seems to have been-till his disappointment in love-tolerably happy, often even gay, sometimes, we fear, rather dissipated. From the character of his companions he could hardly have been otherwise. He was the daily and nightly associate of Lloyd and Thornton, sometimes, too, of Churchill; and those excesses, the effects of which Churchill's huge and iron frame as yet threw off from it, "like dew-drops from the lion's mane," must have told terribly on the delicate nervous system of Cowper. He did not, however, try it very often, and he never allowed his mind to be idle. He kept up his acquaintance with Latin and Greek, and read through all the Iliad and Odyssey, carefully and critically, with a friend, having gone over them before, more rapidly and slightly, at Westminster School. He contributed papers to the Connoisseur, and the St James' Magazine, and his papers in both are exceedingly characteristic of his fine sense, keen discrimination, and delicate humour. translated, in conjunction with his brother, a considerable portion of Voltaire's "Henriade." Altogether, he seemed busy and cheerful, and, perhaps, many thought of him in the spirit of the fine future lines of his best biographer

"How happily the days

Of Thalaba went by!"

He

But all this was false and hollow. It was the flowery verge of a smouldering volcano. In the first place, his small patrimony was wasting away, and as his guineas were disappearing, he felt that he could no more prevent the process, than he could prevent the melting of a patch of snow in the spring sun. Then he had neglected his professional studies, and was not