Less beautiful, however gay,
Is that, which in the scorching day
Receives the weary swain;

Who, laying his long scythe aside,
Sleeps on some bank, with daisies pied,
Till rous'd to toil again.

What labours of the loom I see!
Looms numberless have groan'd for me;
Should every maiden come,

To scramble for the patch that bears
The impress of the robe she wears,
The bell would toll for some.
And Oh! what havoc would ensue !
This bright display of every hue
All in a moment fled!

As if a storm should strip the bowers
Of all their tendrils, leaves and flowers,
Each pocketing a shred.

Thanks then to every gentle fair,
Who will not come to pick me bare
As bird of borrow'd feather;
And thanks to one, above them all,
The gentle fair of Pirtenhall,

Who put THE WHOLE TOGETHER.

GRATITUDE.

ADDRESSED TO LADY HESKETH.

This cap, that so stately appears,

With ribbon-bound tassel on high, Which seems, by the crest that it rears, Ambitious of brushing the sky; This cap to my cousin I owe,

She gave it, and gave me beside, Wreath'd into an elegant bow,

The ribbon, with which it is tied. This wheel-footed studying chair,

Contriv'd both for toil and repose,
Wide-elbow'd, and wadded with hair,

In which I both scribble and dose,
Bright-studded to dazzle the eyes,
And rival the lustre of that
In which, or astronomy lies,
Fair Cassiopeia sat:

These carpets, so soft to the foot,
Caledonia's traffic and pride-

Oh spare them, ye knights of the boot!
Escap'd from a cross-country ride!

This table and mirror within,

Secure from collision and dust,
At which I oft shave cheek and chin,
And periwig nicely adjust:

This moveable structure of shelves,
For its beauty admir'd and its use,
And charg'd with octavos and twelves,
The gayest I had to produce,

Where, flaming in scarlet and gold,
My poems enchanted I view,
And hope, in due time to behold
My Iliad and Odyssey too :
This china, that decks the alcove,

Which here people call a buffet,
But what the gods call it above,

Has ne'er been reveal'd to us yet:
These curtains, that keep the room warm,
Or cool as the season demands,
These stoves that for pattern and form,
Seem the labour of Mulciber's hands.

All these are not half that I owe

To one, from our earliest youth
To me ever ready to show

Benignity, friendship and truth ;
For Time, the destroyer declar'd,

And foe of our perishing kind,
If even her face he has spar'd,

Much less could he alter her mind.
Thus compass'd about with the goods
And chattels of leisure and ease,

I indulge my poetical moods

In many such fancies as these ;

And fancies I fear they will seem,

Poet's goods are not often so fine;

The poets will swear that I dream,

When I sing of the splendour of mine.

Though Cowper could occasionally trifle in rhyme, for the sake of amusing his friends, with an affectionate and endearing gaiety, he appears most truly himself, when he exerts his poetical talents for the higher purpose of consoling the afflicted. Witness the following epistle, composed at the request of Lady Austen, to console a particular friend of hers. Twenty-five letters, written by Mrs. Billacoys, the lady to whom the poem is addressed, were inserted in an early volume of the Theological Miscellany, in which the poem also appeared, Mr. Bull has annexed to it Cowper's translation from the spiritual songs of Madam Guion. I willingly embrace the opportunity of reprinting it in this volume, from a copy corrected by the author, in the pleasing persuasion, that it must prove to all religious readers acquainted with affliction, a lenient charm of very powerful effect.

EPISTLE TO A LADY OF FRANCE,

A PERSON OF GREAT PIETY, AND MUCH AFFLICTED.

Madam ! a stranger's purpose in these lays
Is to congratulate, and not to praise.
To give the creature the Creator's due.
Were guilt in me, and an offence to you.
From man to man, and e'en to woman paid,
Praise is the medium of a knavish trade,
A coin by craft for folly's use design'd,
Spurious, and only current with the blind.

The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown:
No trav'ller ever reach'd that blest abode,
Who found not thorns and briars on his road.
The world may dance along the flowery plain,
Cheer'd as they go by many a sprightly strain;
Where Nature has her yielding mosses spread,
With unshod feet, and yet unharm'd they tread,
Admonish'd scorn the caution, and the friend,
Bent all on pleasure, heedless of its end.

But he, who knew what human hearts would prove,
How slow to learn the dictates of his love;
That hard by nature, and of stubborn will,
A life of ease would make them harder still,
In pity to a chosen few, design'd

Tescape the common ruin of their kind,
Call'd for a cloud to darken all their years,
And said-go spend them in the vale of tears!
O balmy gales of soul-reviving air,
O salutary streams that murmur there,
These flowing from the fount of grace above,
Those breath'd from lips of everlasting love!
The flinty soil indeed their feet annoys,
Chill blasts of trouble nip their springing joys,
An envious world will interpose its frown,
To mar delights superior to its own,
And many a pang, experienc'd still within,
Reminds them of their hated inmate sin;
But ills of every shape and every name,
Transform'd to blessings, miss their cruel aim,
And every moment's calm that soothes the breast,
Is given in earnest of eternal rest.

Ah! be not sad! although thy lot be cast
Far from the flock, and in a boundless waste!
No shepherd's tents within thy view appear,
But the chief Shepherd even there is near;
Thy tender sorrows, and thy plaintive strain,
Flow in a foreign land, but not in vain ;
Thy tears all issue from a source divine,
And ev'ry drop bespeaks a Saviour thine.

So once, in Gideon's fleece, the dews were found,
And drought on all the drooping herbs around.

It may be observed to the honour of the poet, that his extreme shyness and dislike of addressing an absolute stranger did not preclude him from a free and happy use of his mental powers, when he had a prospect of comforting the distressed. His diffidence was often wonderfully great, but his humanity was greater.

Diffident as Cowper was by nature, though a poet, he wanted not the becoming resolution to defend his poetical opinions, when he felt them to be just; particularly on the structure of English verse, which he had examimed with the eye of a master. As a proof of this resolution, I transcribe with pleasure a passage from one of his earliest letters to his bookseller, Mr. Johnson.

It happened that some accidental reviser of the manuscript had

taken the liberty to alter a line in a poem of Cowper's-this liberty drew from the offended poet the following very just and animated remonstrance, which I am anxious to preserve, because it elucidates, with great felicity of expression, his deliberate ideas on English versification.

"I did not write the line, that has been tampered with, hastily, or without due attention to the construction of it, and what appeared to me its only merit is, in its present state, entirely annihilated.

I know that the ears of modern verse-writers are delicate to an excess, and their readers are troubled with the same squeamishness as themselves. So that if a line do not run as smooth as quicksilver they are offended. A critic of the present day serves a poem as a cook serves a dead turkey, when she fastens the legs of it to a post, and draws out all the sinews. For this we may thank Pope; but unless we could imitate him in the closeness and compactness of his expression, as well as in the smoothness of his numbers, we had better drop the imitation, which serves no other purpose than to emasculate and weaken all we write. Give me a manly, rough line, with a deal of meaning in it, rather than a whole poem full of musical periods, that have nothing but their oily smoothness to recommend them.

"I have said thus much, as I hinted in the beginning, because I have just finished a much longer poem than the last, which our common friend will receive by the same messenger that has the charge of this letter. In that poem there are many lines which an ear so nice as the gentleman's who made the above-mentioned alteration, would undoubtedly condemn; and yet (if I may be permitted to say it) they cannot be made smoother without being made the worse for it. There is a roughness on a plum which nobody, that understands fruit, would rub off, though the plum would be much more polished without it. But lest I tire you, I will only add, that I wish you to guard me from all such meddling; assuring you, that I always write as smoothly as I can, but that I never did, never will, sacrifice the spirit or sense of a passage to the sound of it."

In showing with what proper spirit the poet could occasionally vindicate his own verse, let me observe, that although he frequently speaks in his letters with humourous asperity concerning critics, no man could be more willing to receive, with becoming modesty and gratitude, the friendly assistance of just and temperate criticism. Some proofs of his humility, so laudable, if not uncommon, in poets of great powers, I shall seize this opportunity of producing in a few extracts from a series of the author's letters to his bookseller.

DEAR SIR,

Weston, Feb. 11, 1790.

I am very sensibly obliged by the remarks of Mr. Fuseli, and beg that you will tell him so: they afford me opportunities of improvement, which I shall not neglect. When he shall see the press

LIFE OF COWPER.

copy
he will be convinced of this; and will be convinced likewise,
that smart as he sometimes is, he spares me often, when I have no
* I
He will see almost a new translation. * *
mercy on myself.
assure you faithfully, that whatever my faults may be, to be easily
or hastily satisfied with what I have written is not one of them.

Sept. 7, 1790.

It grieves me, that after all I am obliged to go into public without the whole advantage of Mr. Fuseli's judicious strictures. My only consolation is, that I have not forfeited them by my own impatience. Five years are no small portion of a man's life, especially at the latter end of it; and in those five years, being a man of almost no engagements, I have done more in the way of hard work, than most could have done in twice the number. I beg you to present my compliments to Mr. Fuseli, with many and sincere thanks for the services that his own more important occupations would allow him to render me.

It is a singular spectacle for those who love to contemplate the progress of social arts, to observe a foreigner, who has raised himself to high rank in the arduous profession of a painter, correcting, and thanked for correcting, the chief poet of England, in his English version of Homer.

From the series of letters now before me, I cannot resist the temptation of transcribing two more passages, because they display the disposition of Cowper in a very amiable point of view-the first relates to Mr. Newton, the second to Mr. Johnson himself.

Weston, Oct. 3, 1790.

Mr. Newton having again requested that the preface, which he wrote for my first volume, may be prefixed to it, I am desirous to gratify him in a particular that so emphatically bespeaks his friendship for me; and should my book see another edition, shall be obliged to you if you will add it accordingly.

I beg that you will not suffer your reverence either for Homer I never knew or his translator to check your continual examinations. with certainty till now that the marginal strictures I found in the Task-proofs were yours. The justness of them, and the benefit I derived from them, are fresh in my memory, and I doubt not that their utility will be the same in the present instance.

Weston, Oct. 30, 1790.

I am anxious to preserve this singular anecdote, as it is honourable both to the modest poet, and to his intelligent bookseller.

But let me recall the reader's attention to the letter in which the poet delivered so forcibly his own ideas of English versification.