my present sentiments on the subject. You are a wicked fair one for disappointing us of our expected visit, and therefore, out of mere spite, I will not insert them. I have been very ill these ten days, and for the same spite's sake will not tell you what has ailed me. But, lest you should die of a fright, I will have the mercy to tell you that I am recovering.

Mrs. Gifford and her little ones are gone, but your brother is still here. He told me that he had some expectations of Sir John at Weston; if he come, I shall most heartily rejoice once more to see him at a table so many years his own. W. C.

We subjoin the verses addressed to Mr. Wilberforce, intended to vindicate Cowper from the charge of lukewarmness in such a

cause.

SONNET.

TO WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, ESQ. Thy country, Wilberforce, with just disdain, Hears thee by cruel men and impious, call'd Fanatic, for thy zeal to loose the enthrall'd From exile, public sale, and slav'ry's chain. Friend of the poor, the wrong d, the fetter-gall'd, Fear not lest labor such as thine be vain! Thou hast achiev'd a part, hast gain'd the ear Of Britain's senate to thy glorious cause: [pause Hope smiles, joy springs, and tho' cold caution And weave delay, the better hour is near, That shall remunerate thy toils severe By peace for Afric, fenc'd with British laws. Enjoy what thou hast won, esteem and love From all the just on earth and all the blest above!

IN detailing the incidents that occur in the life of Cowper, we have just recorded a malevolent report, highly injurious to his integrity and honor. In order to recall the fact to the memory of the reader, we insert the statement itself, in the words of Cowper: "A report is, and has been some time current, in this and the neighboring counties, that, though I have given myself the air of declaiming against the slave trade in The Task,' I am in reality a friend to it; and last night I received a letter from Joe Rye, to inform me, that I have been much traduced and calumniated on this account."

That the author of "The Task," a poem distinguished by its tone of pure and elevated morality, and breathing a spirit of most uncompromising hostility against the slave trade that such a man, at that time in the very zenith of his fame, should be publicly accused of favoring the very cause which he had so eloquently denounced, is one of those circumstances which, for the honor of human nature, we could wish not to have been compelled to record.

With this painful fact before us, we would

ask, what is popularity, and what wise man would attach value to so fleeting a possession? It is a gleam of sunshine, which embellishes for a moment the object on which it falls, and then vanishes away. In the course of a life not passed without observation, we have had occasion to remark, in the political, the literary, and even in the religious world, the evanescent character of popular favor. We have seen men alternately caressed and deserted, praised and censured, and made to feel the vanity of human applause and admiration. The idol of to-day is dethroned by the idol of to-morrow, which, in its turn, yields to the dominion of some more favored rival.

We

The wisdom of God evidently designs, by these events, to check the thirst for human praise and distinction, by showing us the precarious tenure by which they are held. are thus admonished to examine our motives, and to be assured of the integrity of our intentions; neither to despise public favor, nor yet to overvalue it; but to preserve that calm and equable temper of mind, and that full consciousness of the rectitude of our principles, that we may learn to enjoy it without triumph, or to lose it without dejection. "Henceforth

Thy patron He whose diadem has dropp'd
Yon gems of heaven; eternity thy prize;
And leave the racers of this world their own."

The reader will be amused in finding the origin of the injurious report above mentioned disclosed in the following letter. Mr. Rye was unjustly supposed to have aided in propagating this misconception; but Cowper fully vindicates him from such a charge.

TO THE REV. J. JEKYLL RYE.*

Weston, April 16, 1792, My dear Sir, I am truly sorry that you should have suffered any apprehensions, such as your letter indicates, to molest you for a moment. I believe you to be as honest a man as lives, and consequently do not believe it possible that you could in your letter to Mr. Pitts, or any otherwise, wilfully misrepresent me. In fact you did not; my opinions on the subject in question were, when I had the pleasure of seeing you, such as in that letter you stated them to be, and such they still continue.

If any man concludes, because I allow my self the use of sugar and rum, that therefore I am a friend to the slave trade, he concludes rashly, and does me great wrong; for the man lives not who abhors it more than I do. My reasons for my own practice are satisfactory to myself, and they whose practice is contrary, I suppose, satisfied with theirs. So * Vicar of Dalington, near Northampton.

are,

far is good. Let every man act according to his own judgment and conscience; but if we condemn another for not seeing with our eyes, we are unreasonable; and if we reproach him on that account, we are uncharitable, which is a still greater evil.

I had heard, before I received the favor of yours, that such a report of me as you mention had spread about the country. But my information told me that it was founded thus-The people of Olney petitioned parliament for the abolition-My name was sought among the subscribers, but was not found. A question was asked, how that happened? Answer was made, that I had once indeed been an enemy to the slave trade, but had changed my mind, for that, having lately read a history, or an account of Africa, I had seen it there asserted, that till the commencement of that traffic, the negroes, multiplying at a prodigious rate, were necessitated to devour each other; for which reason I had judged it better that the trade should continue, than that they should be again reduced to so hor

rid a custom.

Now all this is a fable. I have read no such history; I never in my life read any such assertion; nor, had such an assertion presented itself to me, should I have drawn any such conclusion from it. On the contrary, bad as it were, I think it would be better the negroes should even eat one another, than that we should carry them to market. The single reason why I did not sign the petition was, because I was never asked to do it; and the reason why I was never asked was, because I am not a parishioner of Olney,

Thus stands the matter. You will do me the justice, I dare say, to speak of me as of a man who abhors the commerce, which is now, I hope, in a fair way to be abolished, as often as you shall find occasion. And I beg you henceforth to do yourself the justice to believe it impossible that I should, for a moment, suspect you of duplicity or misrepresentation. I have been grossly slandered, but neither by you, nor in consequence of anything that you have either said or written. I remain, therefore, still, as heretofore, with great respect, much and truly yours, W. C.

Mrs. Unwin's compliments attend you. Cowper, on this occasion, addressed the following letter to the editors of the Northampton Mercury, enclosing the verses on Mr. Wilberforce which have just been inserted.

TO THE PRINTERS OF THE NORTHAMPTON MERCURY.

Weston-Underwood, April 16, 1792.

Sirs, Having lately learned that it is pretty generally reported, both in your county

and in this, that my present opinion, concern ing the slave trade, differs totally from that which I have heretofore given to the public, and that I am no longer an enemy, but a friend to that horrid traffic; I entreat you to take an early opportunity to insert in your paper the following lines,* written no longer since than this very morning, expressly for the two purposes of doing just honor to the gentleman with whose name they are inscribed, and of vindicating myself from an aspersion so injurious.

I am, &c., W. COWPER.

These were subsequently altered as follow:

Enjoy what thou bast won, esteem and love From all the just on earth and all the blest above.

Cowper's version of Homer, which has formed so frequent a subject in the preceding pages, led to a public discussion, in which the interests of literature and the success of his own undertaking were deeply concerned. The question agitated was the relative merits of rhyme and blank verse, in undertaking a translation of that great poet. Johnson, the great dictator in the republic of letters, in his predilection for rhyme, had almost proscribed the use of blank verse in poetical composition. "Poetry," he observes, in his life of Milton, "may subsist without rhyme; but English poetry will not please, nor can rhyme ever be safely spared, but where the subject is able to support itself. Blank verse makes some approach to that which is called the lapidary style; has neither the easiness of prose, nor the melody of numbers; and therefore tires by long continuance. Of the Italian writers without rhyme, whom Milton alleges as precedents, not one is popular. What reason could urge in its defence, has been confuted by the ear."

Johnson, however, makes an exception in the instance of Milton.

66

But, whatever be the advantages of rhyme," he adds, "I cannot prevail on myself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer; for I cannot wish his work to be other than it is; yet, like other heroes, he is to be ad

mired rather than imitated. He that thinks himself capable of astonishing, may write blank verse; but those that hope only to please must condescend to rhyme." In his critique on the "Night Thoughts," "This is one he makes a similar concession.

* See page 396.

of the few poems in which blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage. The wild diffusion of the sentiments, and the digressive sallies of imagination, would have been compressed and constrained by confinement to rhyme."*

Cowper, it will be remembered, questions the correctness of Johnson's taste on this subject, and vindicates the force and majesty of blank verse with much weight of argument. With respect, however, to the important question, how a translation of Homer might be best executed, his sentiments are delivered so much at large in the admirable preface to his version of the Iliad, that we shall lay a few extracts from it before the reader.

"Whether a translation of Homer," he remarks, "may be best executed in blank verse or in rhyme, is a question in the decision of which no man can find difficulty, who has ever duly considered what translation ought to be, or who is in any degree practically acquainted with those very different kinds of versification. I will venture to assert, that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense, of his original. The translator's ingenuity, indeed, in this case, becomes itself a snare; and the readier he is at invention and expedient, the more likely he is to be betrayed into the widest departure from the guide whom he professes to follow."

It was this acknowledged defect in Pope, that led Cowper to engage in his laborious undertaking of producing a new version.

We admire the candor with which he appreciates the merits of Pope's translation, and yet we cannot refuse to admit the justness of his strictures.

"I have no contest," he observes, "with my predecessor. None is supposable between performers on different instruments. Mr. Pope has surmounted all difficulties in his version of Homer that it was possible to surmount in rhyme. But he was fettered, and his fetters were his choice." "He has given us the Tale of Troy divine in smooth verse, generally in correct and elegant language, and in diction often highly poetical. But his deviations are so many, occasioned chiefly by the cause already mentioned, that, much as he has done, and valuable as his work is on some accounts, it was yet in the humble province of a translator, that I thought it possible even for me to follow him with some advantage."

* Young's testimony in favor of blank verse is thus forcibly, though rather pompously expressed:

"Blank verse is verse unfallen, uncursed; verse reclaimed, re-enthroned in the true language of the gods." See Conjectures on Original Composition.

What the reader may expect to discover in the two respective versions is thus de scribed:-" The matter found in me, whether he like it or not, is found also in Homer; and the matter not found in me, how much soever he may admire it, is only found in Mr. Pope. I have omitted nothing; I have invented nothing." "Fidelity is indeed the very essence of translation, and the term itself implies it. For which reason. if we suppress the sense of our original, and force into its place our own, we may call our work an imitation, if we please, or perhaps a para phrase, but it is no longer the same author only in a different dress, and therefore it is not a translation."

After dwelling upon the merits and defects of the free and the close translation, and observing that the former can hardly be true to the original author's style and manner, and that the latter is apt to be servile, he thus declares his view of the subject:-"On the whole, the translation which partakes equally of fidelity and liberality, that is close, but not so close as to be servile; free, but not so free as to be licentious, promises fairest; and my ambition will be sufficiently gratified, if such of my readers as are able and will take the pains to compare me in this respect with Homer, shall judge that I have in any measure attained a point so difficult."

He concludes his excellent preface with these interesting words :

"And now I have only to regret that my pleasant work is ended. To the illustrious Greek I owe the smooth and easy flight of many thousand hours. He has been my companion at home and abroad, in the study, in the garden, and in the field; and no measure of success, let my labors succeed as they may, will ever compensate to me the loss of the innocent luxury that I have enjoyed as a translator of Homer."

Having thus endeavored to do justice to the excellent preface of Cowper, we have reserved an interesting correspondence, which passed between Lord Thurlow and Cowper on this subject, and now introduce it to the notice of the reader. It is without date.

TO THE LORD THURLOW.

My Lord,-A letter reached me yesterday from Henry Cowper, enclosing another from your lordship to himself; of which a pas sage in my work formed the subject. It gave me the greatest pleasure: your strictures are perfectly just, and here follows the speech of Achilles accommodated to them.

I did not expect to find your lordship on the side of rhyme, remembering well with how much energy and interest I have heard you repeat passages from the "Paradise