Friendship and love seem'd tenderly at strife, Good-breeding and good sense gave all a grace, He laugh'd and trifled, made him welcome there, Ensur'd him mute attention and regard. HOPE V. 1, pp. 136 to 8. I was a striken deer, that left the herd- And in his hands and feet, the cruel scars. He drew them forth, and heal'd and bade me live. Slighted as it is, and by the great Had found me, or the hope of being free. Ere yet her ear was mistress of her pow'rs. Of Tityrus, assembling, as he sang, The rustic throng beneath his fav'rite beech. Hail, therefore, patroness of health, and ease, Thwart his attempts, or envy his success. He gives a tongue t' enlarge upon, on heart A wish for ease and leisure, and e long Found here that leisure, and that ease 1 wish'd. SUCH is the portrait which the poet has delineated of him. self: it is the production of a master, who had neither the wish nor the intention of presenting to the world a false resemblance; it is, therefore, susceptible of few additions, and, perhaps, cannot be improved. If, however, we allow the truth of the observation,—that only those who have been the subjects of Love, are capable of describing its sensations, with sensibility and justice; Cowper, so far from having lived indifferent to that passion, has, in the following passage, given ample occasion for us to imagine that he was himself the victim of a deep and hopeless attachment: The lover too shuns business and alarms, In sighs he worships his supremely fair, RETIREMENT-V. 1, pp. 210, 11. From I SHALL close these remarks, on the Life of Mr. Cowper, with the following modest and characteristic epitome, drawn by himself, in a letter to a literary friend, dated March the 10th 1792." You are in danger, I perceive," says Mr. Cowper, "of thinking of me more highly than you ought to think. I am not one of the Literati, among whom you seem disposed to place me,-far from it. I told you how heinously I am unprovided with the means of being so, having long since sent all my books to market. My learning accordingly lies in a very narrow compass. It is school-boy learning somewhat improved, and very little more. the age of 20 to 33, I was occupied, or ought to have been, in the study of the law. From 33 to 60 I have spent my time in the country, where my reading has been only an apology for idleness, and where, when I had not either a magazine or a review in my hand, I was sometimes a carpenter, at others, a bird-cage maker, or a gardener, or a drawer of landscapes. At 50 years of age I commenced an author. It is a whim that has served me longest and best, and which will probably be my last. Thus you see I have had very little opportunity to become what is properly calledLearned. In truth, having given myself so entirely of late to poetry, I am not sorry for this deficiency; since great learning, I have been sometimes inclined to suspect, is rather a hindrance to the Fancy than a furtherance." THE Writings of Cowper are not, indeed, voluminous; but they are such as have secured to their author no mean rank among the standard poets of his country,-an elevation not at this day attainable, without sound and prominent excellence. SOME persons have affirmed the rhyme of Cowper to be deficient in melody, and frequently prosaic. There are, it is owned, many incidental defects in the works of this author; but there is a wide distinction between that which is common and adventitious, and that which we consider as radical or constituent. Cowper is certainly negligent, to a degree highly censurable; and he is sometimes betrayed into a species of flatness destructive of the general interest of the piece. He has lines such as Like a proud swan conq'ring the stream by force- And these reciprocally those again Hark! universal nature shook and groan'd and others, perhaps still more unpardonable; but these, which may be called vices common to genius, and from which no human composition is exempt, are richly compensated by |