sensibility by a copy of his verses, to which it gave rise, when these infirmities grew still more striking on her return to Weston.

The air of the South infused a little portion of fresh strength into her shattered frame; and to give it all possible efficacy, the boy whom I have mentioned, and a young associate and fellow-student of his, employed themselves, regularly twice a day, in drawing this venerable cripple, in a commodious garden-chair, round the airy hill of Eartham. To Cowper, and to me, it was a very pleasing spectacle to see the benevolent vivacity of blooming youth thus continually labouring for the ease, health, and amusement of disabled age. But of this interesting time I will speak no more, since I have a better record of it to present to my reader in the following letters.

CCCCII.-TO THE REV. MR. GREATHEED.

MY DEAR SIR, Eartham, August 6, 1792. Having first thanked you for your affectionate and acceptable letter, I will proceed, as well as I can, to answer your equally affectionate request, that I would send you early news of our arrival at Eartham. Here we are in the most elegant mansion that I have ever inhabited, and surrounded by the most delightful pleasuregrounds that I have ever seen; but which, dissipated as my powers of thought are at present, I will not undertake to describe. It shall suffice me to say, that they occupy three sides of a hill, which in Buckinghamshire might well pass for a mountain, and from the summit of which is beheld a most magnificent landscape bounded by the sea, and in one part by the Isle of Wight, which may also be seen plainly from the window of the library, in which I am writing.

It pleased God to carry us both through the journey with far less difficulty and inconvenience than I expected. I began it indeed with a thousand fears, and when we arrived the first evening at Barnet, found myself oppressed in spirit to a degree that could hardly be exceeded. I saw Mrs. Unwin weary, as she might well be, and heard such noises, both within the house and without, that I concluded she would get no rest. But I was mercifully disappointed. She rested, though not well, yet sufficiently; and when we finished our next day's journey at Ripley, we were both in better condition, both of body and mind, than on the day preceding. At Ripley we found a quiet inn, that housed, as it happened that night, no company but ourselves. There we slept well, and rose perfectly refreshed. And except some terrors that I felt at passing over the Sussex hills by moonlight, met with little to complain of, till we arrived about ten o'clock at Eartham. Here we are as happy as it is in the power of terrestrial good to make us. It is almost a Paradise in which we dwell; and our reception has been the kindest that it was possible for friendship and hospitality to contrive. Our host mentions you with great respect, and bids me tell you, that he esteems you highly.

Mrs. Unwin, who is, I think, in some points, already the better for her excursion, unites with mine her best compliments both to yourself and Mrs. Greatheed. I have much to see and enjoy before I can be perfectly apprised of all the delights of Eartham, and will, therefore, now subscribe myself, dear Sir, with great sincerity,

Yours, my

CCCCIII.-To MRS. COURTENAY,

MY DEAREST CATHARINA,

W. C.

Eartham, August 12, 1792.

Though I have travelled far, nothing did I see in my travels that surprised me half so agreeably as your kind letter; for high as my opinion of your good-nature is, I had no hopes of hearing from you till I should have written first; a pleasure which I intended to allow myself the first opportunity.

After three days confinement in a coach, and suffering as we went all that could be suffered from excessive heat and dust, we found ourselves late in the evening at the door of our friend Hayley. In every other respect the journey was extremely pleasant. At the Mitre, Barnet, where we lodged the first evening, we found our friend Rose, who had walked thither from his house in Chancerylane to meet us; and at Kingston, where we dined the second day, I found my old and much valued friend General Cowper, whom I had not seen in thirty years, and but for this journey should never have seen again. Mrs. Unwin, on whose account I had a thousand fears before we set out, suffered as little from fatigue as myself, and begins I hope already to feel some beneficial effects from the air of Eartham, and the exercises that she takes in one of the most delightful pleasure-grounds in the world. They occupy three sides of a hill, lofty enough to command a view of the sea, which skirts the horizon to a length of many miles, with the Isle of Wight at the end of it. The inland scene is equally beautiful, consisting of a large and deep valley well cultivated, and enclosed by magnificent hills, all crowned with wood. I had, for my part, no conception that a poet could be the owner of such a Paradise; and his house is as elegant as his scenes are charming.

But think not, my dear Catharina, that amidst all these beauties I shall lose the remembrance of the peaceful, but less splendid, Weston. Your precincts will be as dear to me as ever when I return; though when that day will arrive I know not, our host being determined, as I plainly see, to keep us as long as possible. Give my best love to your husband. Thank him most kindly for his attention to the old bard of Greece, and pardon me that I do not now send you an epitaph for Fop. I am not sufficiently recollected to compose even a bagatelle at present; but in due time you shall receive it.

Hayley, who will some time or other, I hope, see you at Weston,

is already prepared to love you both, and being passionately fond of music, longs much to hear you.

Adieu,

W. C.

CCCCIV.-To SAMUEL ROSE, Esq.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Eartham, August 14, 1792.

Romney is here; it would add much to my happiness if you were of the party; I have prepared Hayley to think highly, that is justly, of you, and the time I hope will come when you will supersede all need of my recommendation.

Mrs. Unwin gathers strength. I have, indeed, great hopes from the air and exercise which this fine season affords her opportunity to use, that ere we return she will be herself again.

W. C.

CCCCV. To SAMUEL ROSE, Esq.

Eartham, August 18, 1792.

Wishes in this world are generally vain, and in the next we shall make none. Every day I wish you were of the party, knowing how happy you would be in a place where we have nothing to do but enjoy beautiful scenery, and converse agreeably.

Mrs. Unwin's health continues to improve; and even I, who was well when I came, find myself still better.

Yours,

W. C.

The kind wishes that my guest thus addressed to Mr. Rose from Eartham recalls so forcibly to my heart a sense of Cowper's cordial and merited esteem for this very interesting friend, and of my severe affliction in having recently lost him, that I trust the reader will forgive me if I here make a pause in the work before me, to offer a tribute of regard to the memory of a highly-promising character, whose early death has proved to all who had the pleasure of knowing him a source of affectionate regret.

The preceding letters of Cowper to this amiable young man must have prepared such of my readers as may be strangers to his person to take an interest in his fate; and the generous zeal with which he delighted to assist me in illustrating the life of the poet, whom he fervently loved and revered, entitle him to a record of tender distinction in these pages. Our mutual attachment to Cowper led us to become intimate and confidential friends to each other; and the inscrutable decrees of Heaven have now made it my duty to commemorate the endearing qualities of my younger friend, whose

amiable and affectionate hand I could have wished employed in rendering such an office of kind remembrance to me, instead of his receiving it from mine.

SAMUEL ROSE was born on the 20th of June, 1767, at Chiswick, in Middlesex, where his father, Doctor William Rose, a native of Scotland, conducted an academy during many years, with considerable emolument, and unblemished reputation. This gentleman had married a daughter of Dr. Samuel Clark, a divine of talents and eminence among the dissenters. She bore him many children, but Samuel was his only surviving son, educated with fond and successful care by a parent who had devoted the chief attention of a very active, benevolent, and cheerful mind to the important duties of education. Rose being duly prepared by his father for a Scottish university, was sent in 1784 to Glasgow. There he resided in the house of Professor Richardson, a philosopher and a poet; amiable in every character, and so just to the merits of youth, that a friendship and correspondence commenced between the tutor and his pupil, which terminated only with the life of the latter. Rose was very soon distinguished by that turn of mind which Lord Clarendon has mentioned as a characteristic of his own early life, an eager, yet a modest desire to cultivate the acquaintance of men who had risen to eminence by their intellectual endowments. He gained the esteem of several whose writings reflect honour on Scotland; and he maintained through life a constant correspondence, not only with his domestic tutor of Glasgow, but with Professor Young, Professor Millar, and Mr. Mackenzie, the Addison of the North. Of Rose's

juvenile studies it may be sufficient to say, that he obtained every prize, except one, for which he contended as a student of the university. After passing three winters at Glasgow, he attended the courts of law in Edinburgh.

His acquaintance with the literature of Scotland rendered him ambitious of a personal introduction to the celebrated Adam Smith, which he casily obtained. Smith was so highly pleased with the lively English student, young as he was, that as long as he resided in Edinburgh he was constantly invited to the literary circle of that eminent philosopher.

I have thought it proper to notice Rose's early acquaintance with literary men, because his chief title to be commemorated in this work arises from his intimacy with Cowper; and the circumstances already mentioned may serve to show how well prepared the young scholar was, on his return from Edinburgh to England, to prove a visitor peculiarly agreeable and animating to the sequestered poet of Weston. As the origin and progress of their friendship is perfectly displayed in the letters of Cowper, I proceed to an account of the principal occurrences in the life, alas! the brief life, of my younger friend. He had the misfortune to lose his excellent father while he was pursuing his studies in the North; but a loss so unseasonable did not induce him to shrink from the first irksome labours of an

arduous profession. Having entered his name at Lincoln's Inn, November 6, 1786, Rose devoted himself to the law, a line of life for which he seemed equally prepared by nature and education.

With a mind acute and powerful, with a fund of classical learning and of general knowledge, with an early command of language, and with manners peculiarly conciliating, he had every thing to hope. Though his spirit was naturally ardent, he submitted to the most. tiresome process of early discipline in his profession, placing himself under a special pleader in 1787, and attending him three years. Being called to the bar in 1796, he attached himself to the home circuit, and to the sessions of Sussex. His first opportunity of displaying professional ability occurred in Chichester, where, having a clergyman for his client, he conciliated the esteem of his audience by expatiating with propriety, eloquence, and success, on the character of a divine.

The young advocate was still more admired for the display of a talent peculiarly striking in a barrister of no experience. I mean the rare talent of examining a witness with a becoming mixture of acuteness and humanity. In questioning a good, but misguided woman, he showed not only a decent, but a most delicate indulgence to her sex and situation, yet ingeniously and tenderly drew from her all the information that was sufficient to establish the innocence of his client. The commencement of a professional career is a most interesting scene to a young barrister, and to his anxious friends. Rose had the gratification of hearing, that many of his acquaintance, who attended him with affectionate solicitude on this occasion, conceived, from the first display of his talents, a most sanguine hope and persuasion that he was destined to rise by sure, though slow degrees to the highest honours of his profession. But Heaven had otherwise decreed.

Though, like most men of middling stature, he possessed a considerable portion of bodily strength and agility, his constitution was naturally delicate. At a very early age he had been afflicted with periodical head-achs of extreme severity; and soon after he began to exercise his profession, his friends were apprehensive that his progress in it might be cruelly impeded by the appearance of hereditary gout. On a circumstance so alarming, it was suggested to him, that perhaps his best mode of guarding against the evils that might arise from an enemy so insidious and so formidable, would be to make an early retreat from a very laborious profession, and to take refuge in the honourable tranquillity of the church. An idea which engaged his serious deliberation, because a nobleman of singular beneficence, who knew his merits and his critical situation, most liberally offered to him the refuge in question by a conditional promise of ecclesiastical preferment. The grateful spirit of Rose was deeply affected by an unexpected offer of patronage, and as his exemplary father had early impressed on his mind the belief of Christianity, he was far from feeling any motives of conscience that could make him un