not very agreeable to a head that has long been habituated to the luxury of choosing its subject, and has been as little employed upon business, as if it had grown upon the shoulders of a much wealthier gentleman. But the numskull pays for it now, and will not presently forget the discipline it has undergone lately. If I succeed in this doubtful piece of promotion, I shall have at least the satisfaction to reflect upon, that the volumes I write will be treasured up with the utmost care for ages, and will last as long as the English Constitution. A duration which ought to satisfy the vanity of any author who has a spark of love for his country. O! my good Cousin! if I was to open my heart to you, I could show you strange sights; nothing I flatter myself that would shock you, but a great deal that would make you wonder. I am of a very singular temper, and very unlike all the men that I have ever conversed with. Certainly I am not an absolute fool; but I have more weakness than the greatest of all the fools I can recollect at present. In short, if I was as fit for the next world, as I am unfit for this,and God forbid I should speak it in vanity,-I would not change conditions with any saint in Christendom.

My destination is settled at last, and I have obtained a furlough. Margate is the word, and what do you think will ensue, Cousin? I know what you expect, but ever since I was born I have been good at disappointing the most natural expectations. Many years ago, Cousin, there was a possibility I might prove a very different thing from what I am at present. My character is now fixed, and rivetted fast upon me; and, between friends, it is not a very splendid one, or likely to be guilty of much fascination.

Adieu, my dear Cousin! So much as I love you, I wonder how the deuce it has happened I was never in love with you. Thank Heaven that I never was, for at this time I have had a pleasure in writing to you, which in that case I should have forfeited. Let me hear from you, or I shall reap but half the reward that is due to my noble indifference.

Yours ever, and evermore,

W. C.

It was hoped from the change of his station, that his personal appearance in parliament might not be required; but a parliamentary dispute made it necessary for him to appear at the bar of the House of Lords, to entitle himself publicly to the office.

Speaking of this important incident in a sketch which he once formed himself, of passages in his early life, he expresses what he endured at the time in these remarkable words :- They, whose spirits are formed like mine, to whom a public exhibition of themselves is mortal poison, may have some idea of the horrors of my situation-others can have none."

His terrors on this occasion arose to such an astonishing height, that they utterly overwhelmed his reason: for although he had

endeavoured to prepare himself for his public duty, by attending closely at the office for several months, to examine the parliamentary journals, his application was rendered useless by that excess of diffidence, which made him conceive, that, whatever knowledge he might previously acquire, it would all forsake him at the bar of the house. This distressing apprehension increased to such a degree, as the time for his appearance approached, that, when the day, so anxiously dreaded, arrived, he was unable to make the experiment. The very friends who called on him for the purpose of attending him to the House of Lords acquiesced in the cruel necessity of his relinquishing the prospect of a station só severely formidable to a frame of such singular sensibility.

The conflict between the wishes of his just ambition, and the terrors of diffidence, so entirely overwhelmed his health and faculties, that after two learned and benevolent divines (Mr. John Cowper, his brother, and the celebrated Mr. Martin Madan, his first cousin) had vainly endeavoured to establish a lasting tranquillity in his mind by friendly and religious conversation, it was found necessary to remove him to St. Alban's. He resided there a considerable time under the care of that eminent physician, Dr. Cotton, a scholar and a poet, who added to many accomplishments a peculiar sweetness of manners in very advanced life, when I had the pleasure of a personal acquaintance with him.

The misfortune of mental derangement is a topic of such awful delicacy, that I consider it as the duty of a biographer rather to sink in tender silence, than to proclaim, with circumstantial and offensive temerity, the minute particulars of a calamity, to which all human beings are exposed, and perhaps in proportion as they have received from nature those delightful but dangerous gifts, a heart of exquisite tenderness, and a mind of creative energy.

This is a sight for Pity to peruse,

Till she resembles faintly what she views;
Till Sympathy contracts a kindred pain,
Pierc'd with the woes that she laments in vain.

This, of all maladies that man infest,

Claims most compassion, and receives the least.

But with a soul, that ever felt the sting
Of sorrow, sorrow is a sacred thing.

'Tis not, as heads that never ache suppose,
Forg`ry of Fancy, and a dream of woes.
Man is a harp, whose chords elude the sight,
Each yielding harmony, dispos'd aright;
The screws revers'd (a task which, if he please,
God, in a moment, executes with ease)
Ten thousand thousand strings at once go loose;
Lost, till he tune them, all their power and use.

No wounds like those a wounded spirit feels;

No cure for such, till God, who makes them, heals.
And thou, sad sufferer under nameless ill,

That yields not to the touch of human skill,
Improve the kind occasion, understand

A Father's frown, and kiss the chast'ning hand!

It is in this awful and instructive light, that Cowper himself teaches us to consider the calamity of which I am now speaking; and of which he, like his illustrious brother of Parnassus, the younger Tasso, was occasionally a most affecting example. Heaven appears to have given a striking lesson to mankind, to guard both virtue and genius against pride of heart and pride of intellect, by thus suspending the affections and the talents of two most tender and sublime poets, who, in the purity of their lives, and in the splendour of their intellectual powers, will be ever deservedly reckoned among the pre-eminent of the earth.

From December, 1763, to the following July, the mind of Cowper appears to have laboured under the severest sufferings of morbid depression; but the medical skill of Dr. Cotton, and the cheerful benignant manners of that accomplished physician, gradually succeeded, with the blessing of Heaven, in removing the undescribable load of religious despondency, which had clouded the admirable faculties of this innocent and upright man. His ideas of religion were changed from the gloom of terror and despair to the lustre of comfort and delight.

This juster and happier view of evangelical truth is said to have arisen in his mind, while he was reading the third chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. Devout contemplation became more and more dear to his reviving spirit; resolving to relinquish all thoughts of a laborious profession, and all intercourse with the busy world, he acquiesced in a plan of settling at Huntingdon, by the advice of his brother, who, as a minister of the Gospel, and a Fellow of Bennet college in Cambridge, resided in that university; a situation so near to the place chosen for Cowper's retirement, that it afforded to these affectionate brothers opportunities of easy and frequent intercourse. I regret that all the letters which passed between them have perished; and the more so, as they sometimes corresponded in verse. John Cowper was also a poet. He had engaged to execute a translation of Voltaire's Henriade; and in the course of the work requested and obtained the assistance of William, who translated, as he informed me himself, two entire cantos of the poem. This fraternal production is said to have appeared in a magazine of the year 1759. I have discovered a rival, and probably an inferior translation, so published; but the joint work of the poetical brothers has hitherto eluded all my researches.

In June, 1765, the reviving invalid removed to a private lodging in the town of Huntingdon; but Providence soon introduced him into a family which afforded him one of the most singular and

valuable friends that ever watched an afflicted mortal in seasons of overwhelming adversity; that friend, to whom the poet exclaims, in the commencement of The Task;

And witness, dear companion of my walks,
Whose arm, this twentieth winter, I perceive
Fast lock'd in mine, with pleasure, such as love
Confirm'd by long experience of thy worth
And well-tried virtues, could alone inspire:
Witness a joy, that thou hast doubled long!
Thou know'st my praise of nature most sincere,
And that my raptures are not conjur'd up
To serve occasions of poetic pomp,

But genuine, and art partner of them all.

These verses would be alone sufficient to make every reader take a lively interest in the lady they describe; but these are far from being the only tribute which the gratitude of Cowper has paid to the endearing virtues of his female companion. More poetical memorials of her merit will be found in these volumes, and in verse so exquisite, that it may be questioned, if the most passionate love ever gave rise to poetry more tender or more sublime.

Yet, in this place, it appears proper to apprize the reader, that it was not love, in the common acceptation of the word, which inspired these admirable eulogies. The attachment of Cowper to Mrs. Unwin, the Mary of the poet! was an attachment perhaps unparalleled. Their domestic union, though not sanctioned by the common forms of life, was supported with perfect innocence, and endeared to them both, by their having struggled together through a series of sorrow. A spectator of sensibility, who had contemplated the uncommon tenderness of their attention to the wants and infirmities of each other in the decline of life, might have said of their singular attachment:

L'Amour n'a rien de si tendre,

Ni l'Amitié de si doux.

As a connexion so extraordinary forms a striking feature in the history of the poet, the reader will probably be anxious to investigate its origin and progress. It arose from the following little incident:

The countenance and deportment of Cowper, though they indicated his native shyness, had yet very singular powers of attraction. On his first appearance in one of the churches at Huntingdon, he engaged the notice and respect of an amiable young man, William Cawthorne Unwin, then a student at Cambridge, who having observed, after divine service, that the interesting stranger was taking a solitary turn under a row of trees, was irresistibly led to share his walk, and to solicit his acquaintance.

They were soon pleased with each other, and the intelligent youth, charmed with the acquisition of such a friend, was eager to communicate the treasure to his parents, who had long resided in Huntingdon.

C

Mr. Unwin, the father, had for some years been master of a freeschool in the town; but as he advanced in life he quitted that laborious situation, and, settling in a large convenient house in the High Street, contented himself with a few domestic pupils, whom he instructed in classical literature.

This worthy divine, who was now far advanced in years, had been Lecturer to the two churches at Huntingdon, before he obtained, from his college at Cambridge, the living of Grimston. While he lived in expectation of this preferment, he had attached himself to a young lady of lively talents, and remarkably fond of reading. This lady, who, in the process of time, and by a series of singular events, became the friend and guardian of Cowper, was the daughter of Mr. Cawthorne, a draper, in Ely. She was married to Mr. Unwin on his succeeding to the preferment that he expected from his college, and settled with him on his living of Grimston; but not liking the situation and society of that sequestered scene, she prevailed on her husband to establish himself in Huntingdon, where he was known and respected.

They had resided there many years, and with their two only children, a son and a daughter (whom I remember to have noticed at Cambridge, in the year 1763, as a youth and a damsel of countenances uncommonly pleasing), they formed a cheerful and social family, when the younger Unwin, described by Cowper as

"A friend,

Whose worth deserves the warmest lay
That ever friendship penn'd,"

presented to his parents the solitary stranger, on whose retirement he had benevolently intruded, and whose welfare he became more and more anxious to promote. An event highly pleasing and comfortable to Cowper soon followed this introduction; he was affectionately solicited by all the Unwins to relinquish his lonely lodging, and become a part of their family.

I am now arrived at that period in the personal history of my friend, when I am fortunately enabled to employ his own descriptive powers in recording the events and characters that particularly interested him, and in displaying the state of his mind at a remarkable season of his chequered life. I have selected the following among the earliest letters of this affectionate writer, with which time and chance, with the kindness of his friends and relations, have afforded me the advantage of adorning this work. Those addressed to Lady Hesketh, from Huntingdon, had not been discovered when the commencement of this compilation was first printed. Now as her tenderness to her illustrious, though unhappy, relation has been exemplary through every period of his changeful life, I take a pleasure in giving a new arrangement to the series of his letters, because it assigns to this lady her proper place of preeminence as an early friend of the poet.

Among his juvenile intimates and correspondents, he particularly