Cowper," says Mr. Newton, "loved the poor: he often visited them in their cottages, conversed with them in the most condescending manner, sympathised with them, counselled and comforted them in their distresses, and those who were seriously disposed were often cheered and animated by his prayers." Of their intimacy, the same writer speaks in these emphatic terms: "For nearly twelve years we were seldom separated for seven hours at a time, when we were awake and at home. The first six I passed in daily admiring and aiming to imitate him; during the second six, I walked pensively with him in the valley of death!" Among other friendly services about this time, he wrote for Mr. Newton some beautiful hymns, which the latter introduced into public worship, and published in a collection long before Cowper was known as a poet.

In 1773, Cowper's dreadful malady assumed the form of severe paroxysms of religious despondency, during which Mrs. Unwin tended him with a patience and a tenderness thoroughly maternal. Pending his convalescence, which was not perfected until 1778, he amused himself with light reading, such as magazines or reviews afforded, with taming hares, making bird-cages, drawing landscapes, and gardening. After his recovery, at fifty years of age, he commenced author; 66 a whim," he wrote, "that has served me the longest, the best, and will probably be my last." His poetical talents had hitherto lain, if not dormant, so slightly employed, as to make his progress in that respect, in the former part of his life, scarcely capable of being traced. In 1782, however, appeared his first volume of poems, comprising Table-Talk, Hope, The Progress of Error, &c. The reception of the volume was not equal to its merits on the part of the general public; but it procured for the author the warm admiration of Johnson, Franklin, and other critics of sound appreciation.

Soon after the publication of this volume, the widow of Sir Robert Austen came to reside at Olney; and being a woman of superior intellect, rendered attractive by good temper and gaiety of disposition, soon recommended herself to the esteem, and, ere long, to the warm friendship of Cowper, a friendship, there is every reason to believe, not less platonic than that possessed by Mrs. Unwin; for the remembrance of the deep and devoted attachment of his youth, to which reference has already been made, was never effaced in Cowper's heart by any succeeding impression of the same nature. Unluckily, the older friend conceived, after a while, jealousy of the influence which she saw gradually acquired by the more intellectual, more brilliant, and more agreeable new-comer; and, at length, appealing to Cowper's gratitude for her past services, plainly gave him the choice of either renouncing Lady Austen's acquaintance or her own. Cowper decided upon adhering to the friend who had watched over him in his deepest afflictions, and sent Lady Austen a valedictory letter, couched in terms of regret and regard, but which necessarily put an end to their intercourse. The course he adopted was, no doubt, morally right; but one regrets it, nevertheless, not only for the pain it inflicted on an amiable and talented woman, but for the possible detriment that Cowper intellectually may have sustained from being deprived of such an inspirer as Lady Austen. It was she who suggested to the

poet John Gilpin on the one hand, the translation of Homer on the other; and it was to her suggestion also that we owe, in large measure, Cowper's great original poem, The Task.

Fortunately for Cowper, Mrs. Unwin's jealousy had been satiated with the victory over Lady Austen; so that Lady Hesketh was permitted, without let or hindrance, to minister to her unhappy relative from the time of the renewal of their intercourse in 1784, after a separation of nearly thirty years, till his death. His letters to this lady, as Campbell justly observes, give the most pleasing view of Cowper's mind, exhibiting all the warmth of his heart as a kinsman, and his simple and unstudied elegance as a correspondent. To Lady Hesketh's kindness Cowper was indebted for a more commodious house at Weston, near Olney, which Mrs. Unwin shared with him, and for the use of her carriage and horses. In 1784 appeared Tirocinium, a poem designed "to censure the want of discipline and

the inattention to morals which prevail in public schools, and to recommend private education as preferable on all accounts." The first edition of his translation of Homer was published in 1791; the second, so corrected as to amount to a new work, appeared in 1799. In the interval he had lost Mrs. Unwin, and himself had fallen into a state of melancholy torpor, which extinguished even his social feelings, and rendered him indifferent to all that was passing; he received, for example, with total indifference, and almost unconsciousness, the information that the king had granted him a pension of 300l. a year.

In 1799, after completing his revision of Homer, he translated some of Gay's fables into Latin, and wrote an original poem, founded upon

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an incident related in Anson's Voyages; this poem, the Castaway, was the last flicker of the lamp. On the 5th of April, 1800, William Cowper died, and was buried in St. Edmund's Chapel, Dereham Church.

ERASMUS DARWIN.

(1731-1802.)

Erasmus Darwin was born at Elston, near Newark, in 1731, the son of a private gentleman. Having passed with credit through St. John's College, Cambridge, he proceeded to Edinburgh, where he applied himself to the study of medicine; and having obtained a doctor's degree there, settled at Lichfield, where, by the display of great skill and presence of mind in a difficult case, he established a good practice, which he confirmed and enlarged by his marriage with Miss Howard, a girl of extensive connections in the city. This lady died in 1770; and in 1781 the doctor married the widow of Colonel Pole, of Radbourne Hall, near Derby, who possessed a jointure of 600l., and at whose request he removed from Lichfield to Derby, where he continued in practice until his death in 1802. Doctor Darwin had written in earlier life some poetical effusions, which the fear lest they might affect his medical reputation had induced him to keep in his desk. When, however, his established practice, and, above all, his possession of his second wife's 600l. a year, rendered him more independent, he published (1781) the first part of his singular poem The Botanic Garden; followed in 1789 and in 1792 by the second and third parts, under the title of The Loves of the Plants. Linnæus," writes the doctor, "has demonstrated that all flowers contain families of males or females, or both, and on their marriage has constructed his invaluable system of botany." Upon this system the doctor, in turn, constructed his poems, wherein the Rosicrucian doctrine of gnomes, nymphs, sylphs, and salamanders is adopted as the machinery. The novelty, and not improbably a certain grossness of detail, thereby veiled in scientific forms, gave, for a time, greater popularity to these poems than their intrinsic merits would have commanded; though these found favour with Cowper, who extolled the doctor's song as,

"though various, yet complete ; Rich in embellishments, as strong And learned as 'tis sweet."

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Poetical praise, however, has frequently quite as much to do with a happy phrase or turn occurring to the writer, as with any actual merit in the subject of his verse. Doctor Darwin's other productions are, Zoonomia, or the Laws of Organic Life (1793 and 1796); Phytologra, or the Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening (1801); A Treatise on Female Education; and The Temple of Nature, a reconstruction of The Botanic Garden. That immense twaddler, Mrs. Anna Seward, in her Life of Darwin, claims to have written the opening lines of