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advantages as a composer of verses, that I have not read an English poet these thirteen years, and but one these twenty years. Imitation even of the best models is my aversion; it is servile and mechanical, a trick that has enabled many to usurp the name of author, who could not have written at all, if they had not written upon the pattern of somebody indeed original. But when the ear and the taste have been much accustomed to the manner of others, it is almost impossible to avoid it; and we imitate, in spite of ourselves, just in proportion as we admire." After this confession, though it by no means surprises to findwhere the subject is not far beyond such learning-a perfect familiarity with the classics, especially the Latin authors, in the compositions of Cowper, yet his present and intimate knowledge of those English poets with whose works he could not thus have been conversant since manhood, and hardly before, has been matter of admiration. An extrac from one of Lady Hesketh's letters, which we have lately met with, appears to offer some explanation. My account of Mrs Unwin may seem perhaps to you contradictory; but her character developes itself by degrees, and though I might have led you to suppose her grave and melancholy, she is not so by any means. When she speaks upon grave subjects, she does express herself with a puritanical tone, and in puritanical expressions; but on all other subjects she seems to have a great disposition to cheerfulness and mirth. I must say, too, that she seems to be very well read in the English poets, as appears by several little quotations, which she makes from time to time, and has a true taste for what is excellent in that way." Cowper would thus be brought insensibly to renew the impressions of his earlier studies, and without the disadvantages, which he dreaded, of overlaying fancy, derive all the benefits which he himself so well describes, when he says, "he who would write, should read, not that he may retail the observations of other men, but that being thus refreshed and replenished, he may find himself in a condition to make and to produce his own."

NOTE 3.-Page 41, last line.

The soul-quickening words — Believe and live.

Cowper kindles into poetry when only a stray thought of religion mingles its influence with even the lowliest subject. In proportion, then, as divine themes became the habitual language of his muse, that language assumes more and more of nobleness and beauty. Both the words and imagery in this passage are a proof of this, and their pleasing grandeur strikes with greater force, as a contrast to the gloomy sternness of Dante's and Milton's inscription over the "infernal doors."

NOTE 4.--Page 43, line 18.

Wearing out life in his religious whim,
Till his religious whimsy wears out him.

These lines, by their peculiar turn and play upon the words, are happily characteristic of the contempt, mixed with ridicule, by which it is the author's object to bring into disrepute all such hollow subst.tutions for practical sanctity.

Note 5.-Page 44, line 12.

Abstinence, and beggary, and lice.

Cowper, in his Letters, avows a disregard of merely poetical refinements in language, and a resolution to employ all words which may strongly represent his own meaning. Hence, a very ordinary tone is often given to his verses, even on topics of deep interest; rarely, however, save when indignantly satirical, are his expressions coarse. In this preference of vigour he appears to have followed his ancestor Donne, whose famous line,

The grave-dust without, and stink within,

affords an example of the nature and superiority of Cowper's practice. In Donne's line, the satire on human pride is so offensive, that instead of improving it disgusts us. Our associations with the grave, exist less in personal feeling, than in sympathies which belong to our most revered affections, our most sacred hopes. But Cowper, as a satirist, evinces consummate knowledge of the human heart; be his admonitions, remonstrances, or sarcasms ever so stern, indignant, or biting, they never glance from their legitimate objects — follies and vices; they never wound where they cannot correct.

NOTE 6.-Page 47, line 8.

Blown all aslant, a driving, dashing rain.

In the description of natural scenery, our author very seldom, perhaps never, rises to the sublime. Indeed, with the grand features of creation, the lofty mountain, or dark forest, or wide extended main, he had been but little conversant. Of Nature, however, in her quieter moods and ordinary appearances, he was not only a diligent observer, but he looked upon her with that rare intelligence, granted only to the highest order of genius in the imitative arts, which seizes at once the character and the details, thus reproducing what is great without confusion, and what is minute without feebleness. Hence is the descriptive poetry of Cowper pre-eminently animated with a graphic power, which now delights by variety of elaborate finish, now strikes by a bold reality compressing a whole description into a single epithet. The Task chiefly abounds in examples of the former, these earlier poems of the latter excellence. In this respect, the two lines in the text,

See where it smokes along the sounding plain,
Blown all aslant, a driving, dashing rain,

may be advantageously compared with any couplet in the whole compass of descriptive poetry. It must, however, be confessed, that the entire simile is feeble, incapable of sustaining the awful truth that follows. The escape of a traveller from the anger of the " impotent elements," brought to illustrate the salvation of a soul from "infinite wrath," leaves the imagination vainly labouring to discover a resemblance.

NOTE 7.-Page 48, line 9.

Hence a demeanour holy and unspeck'd.

Unspeck'd" is one of the very few instances, perhaps the only one, in which Cowper has employed a word on his own authority. He is indeed a great master of genuine English; but though he often makes

very bold attempts, hazardous they would be in other hands, to render common, or even mean expressions poetical, his works have extended the limits of the language of poetry by novel applications, rather than augmented the number of its vocables by new inventions. This is the

true method of writing well, which it were to be wished his successors had imitated.

NOTE 8. Page 48, line 3 from bottom.

Oh—then a text would touch him at the quick.

At

Marie Francis Arouet de Voltaire, born February 20, 1694, was educated in the Jesuits' College at Paris, in which capital he also died on the 30th of May, 1778. Voltaire's life was more chequered than the lives of literary men usually are. He was twice incarcerated as a state prisoner in the Bastile before he was thirty, and in both instances, we believe, unjustly. During his first imprisonment he formed the plan of the Henriade; during the interval of liberty he published three tragedies; and after his second captivity, resided three years in England. On his return, work followed work from his pen with wonderful rapidity; he became an academician, a courtier, and historiographer of France. the age of fifty-six he accepted the invitation and friendship of Frederic the Great; but after three years residence, quarrelled with his royal friend, and on quitting the Prussian dominions, Paris being interdicted to him, purchased the estate of Ferney, near Geneva, where, for thirty years, he gave himself wholly to literature. The fruits of all these labours in the best edition (that of Beaumarchais's) occupy seventy volumes octavo. But Voltaire is not only one of the most copious, he is likewise one of the most excellent writers of modern times. "There is not," observes La Harpe," in the literature of any country, either in verse or prose, an author who has written on so many opposite kinds of subjects, and has so constantly displayed a superiority in all of them.” This is true; but, unfortunately, the strictures of our text are also true, and Voltaire fulfilled the prediction of one of his tutors, and became the Coryphæus of deism in France. The scenes alluded to in these verses took place during Voltaire's last visit to Paris, after an absence of twentynine years, when his bust was crowned on the stage, and placed by the French academicians next to that of Corneille. But it is not true that Voltaire," an infidel in health," was touched by a text when sick. There are three men, famous by "the bad eminence" of deism-Voltaire, Rousseau, and David Hume-whom the well-meaning, with very mistaken notions about the honour of religion, represent as expiring in agonies of awakened conviction. The first died of an overdose of laudanum, consequently in a stupor; the second expired while gazing upon the sinking sun with that love of Nature, which was the only unaffected sentiment he retained to the last; while Hume departed. like Socrates, almost in the midst of philosophical conversation. What then? Do these instances reflect on the power of Christianity over the conscience? By no means. The heart of the stubborn unbeliever is hardened, so that it may not be "touched" by the Gospel to conversion and saving faith. The dying impenitence of men such as these, accom.. plished possessors of a perishable learning, is, in fact, a proof of the veracity of that knowledge which is from above.

Not so.

Because ye will not, Conyers would reply.

The Rev. Dr Conyers of York, a friend of Mr Unwin, junior, and who first introduced Mr Newton to Mrs Unwin and Cowper, while they resided in Huntingdon.

NOTE 10.- Page 50, line 12.

As leanest land supplies the richest wine.

This is not quite correct. The poet seems to have considered high flavoured as synonymous with rich wine.

NOTE 11.- Page 50, line 27.

Like gleanings of an olive-tree they show.

English poets rarely succeed in describing foreign imagery, though they excel all others in delineations of native scenes. On this point Cowper well remarks," Thomson is admirable in description; but I could wish, with Dr Johnson, that he had confined himself to this country for when he describes what he never saw, one is forced to read him with some allowance." One might happily apply these his own words to our author, with this difference, that he rarely, and only for brief illustration, deviates into distant landscape. The simile before us shews his wisdom in this: it is beautifully said of an English fruit tree; but of an olive, with small clustering berries growing sessile along the branches, it affords no consistent idea.

NOTE 12.- Page 52, line 18.

Such lunacy is ignorance alone.

Nothing can corroborate more strongly the view which has been taken of the religion and misfortunes of Cowper in the Life prefixed to the present edition of his works than these lines. In the Memoir it is shewn that his insanity first sprung from his unbelief, and that he was restored through the grace of believing. He himself here testifies deliberately to the same truths. Who then shall accuse us of having harshly judged him? His misfortunes, so far as they appeared to be visitations of Heaven, have our deepest sympathy; but with the madness of unbelief or wilful ignorance rather, with that recklessness of God's empire which would prompt the suicide to dare divine justice and eternal wrath, rather than calmly suffer and meekly learn, there can be maintained, even in the case of Cowper, no measures of conciliation.

NOTE 13.- Page 54, line 2.'

Of all that wisdom dictates, this the drift,—
That man is dead in sin, and life a gift.

The Christian reader will not here misinterpret the strong example which the poet has selected. Grace cannot come to the unworthy, because no unworthy person can have saving faith, neither will it be vouchsafed to the merely morally pure rejecter of the gospel scheme. The meaning of the text, therefore, is, that the penitent sinner who seeks it as a gift, shall find the grace which is denied to the self-righteous, who asks it not wholly and only through the merits of the Redeemer.

NOTES TO EXPOSTULATION,

NOTE 1.-Page 60, line 2.

What appears

In England's case to move the muse to tears?

The reader will observe, that Cowper's ideas of England are drawn here exclusively from his recollections of London. Of English life and manners in the country, he could have acquired but limited experience in his early years; and this slender acquaintance had not been increased by subsequent opportunities of observation.

NOTE 2.-Page 60, line 6 from bottom.

Wept, and stamp'd, and smote his thigh in vain.

The editor remembers to have heard Talma remark, in reference to this particular action, that it long seemed to him a most unnatural gesture of grief, until having witnessed a very distressing scene of shipwreck on the coast of Brittany, he observed that the distracted relatives on shore of those perishing at sea, "smote upon their thighs" incessantly as they ran wildly about the beach.

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NOTE 3.- Page 61, line 5 from bottom.

Catch from each other a contagious spot,
The foul forerunner of a general rot.

Analyze this. A hireling shepherd is appointed to watch a fountain he falls asleep on the brink-an enemy of his master comes, and poisons the stream. the flocks drink of it, are infected, and perish miserably. There is even an underplot in which he himself acts the traitor, and taints the current with his own infusions."-J. MONTGOMERY.

NOTE 4.-Page 65, line 2.

Might give more life to marble, or might fill
The glowing tablets with a juster skill.

Christianity-whose perfect love casteth out fear, which expands the charities and sanctifies the affections of the heart-refines also, and has multiplied its sympathies with the beautiful, the grand, and the pure in nature and taste. But the stern appointments of the Mosaic dispensation permitted no exercise to sensibilities, which, when unenlightened, as sad experience proves, are but too apt to lead astray. Hence, among the Jews, the fine arts never flourished. Sculpture existed only in a few prescribed ornaments for sacred purposes; painting was unknown as an art; and even the architecture of the temple was executed by foreign hands.