COWPER, William, a distinguished English poet, was born at Bdrkhamstead, in Hertfordshire, on the 26th of-November 1731. His father, who was rector of the parish, was nephew to Lord Chancellor Cowper, and chaplain to George II. At six years of age Cowper was taken from under the care of a mother whose amiable qualities were afterwards commemorated in one of his loveliest poems, and placed at a school in Bedfordshire. The poet had received from nature a mind so remarkably sensitive as to render him incapable ofbearing up under the common hardships of life. The arrows of affliction, which are shared by all, were poisoned to him, and the lightest of them cankered where it fell. It was his misfortune to be early tried at school, and the sufferings he endured, particularly from a school-fcllow, an embryo tyrant of fifteen, embittered his opinion of public education ever afterwards. The impression which these wrongs made upon him survived the vicissitudes of half a century, and were embodied in his Tirocinium.

From the age of eight to nine he'was boarded with an oculist, on account of a complaint in his eyes. He was then sent to Westminster, where he continued until lie was eighteen, when he removed to the office of a London solicitor.

By his own account his time was there spent in extreme idleness. After serving three years in the house of the solicitor, he went into chambers in the Temple; but his hours were devoted to other pursuits than those connected with his profession, which he had rather attached himself to from a sense of duty than adopted from choice. At this period he translated some pieces from Horace, and assisted Lloyd and Colman with some prose effusions for their periodical works. Without charging Cowper with intemperance at this time, it may be said that he lived as a man of the world. He formed a segment of a gay and convivial circle, composed of men distinguished for their wit and talent; and for these qualities he was himself by them highly admired and esteemed in return.

His circumstances, however, soon compelled him to cast about for a situation, and by the influence of a powerful friend and relation he was appointed to the lucrative.office of clerk to the committees of the House of Lords; but his natural antipathy to serve in any thing like a public capacity caused the appointment to be changed to that of clerk of the journals in the same house. But the prospect of easy competency thus opened up to him was completely darkened by the approaches of that dreadful calamity which afterwards entirely eclipsed his reason. During several months he attended at the house and examined the books, in order to gain the knowledge necessary to qualify for the clerkship. The progress he made will be best learned from his own words. “The journal books,” says he, “were indeed thrown open tome, a thing which could not be refused, and from which perhaps a man in health, and with a head turned to business, might have gained all the information he wanted; but it was not so with me. I read without perception, and was so distressed, that had every clerk in the office been my friend it could have availed me little; for I was not in a condition to receive instruction, much less to elicit it out of the manuscripts without direction.” A strong opposition to his friend’s right of nomination had begun to show itself; and as every advantage was sought for to disconcert him, Cowper expected to be examined at the bar of the house. To pass with eclat through this, to him, terrible ordeal, he was preparing himself, as we have seen. As the day of trial drew nigh his agonies increased, till they at last fairly unsettled his brain. On the day appointed for his examination his friend called upon him, and found his protégé in a state too deplorable to be dwelt upon. He had attempted suicide, and the fearful insignia of self-destruction lay scattered about his apartment. These, were, a garter, which had been broken, and an iron rod across his bed, which had been bent in the effort to accomplish his purpose by strangulation.

In this dreadful state of mind he was removed to the house of Dr Cotton of St Albans, with whom he continued for nineteen months. His faculties, however, had begun to return within less than the half of that time; and his religious despondency, which added a fearful contribution to his malady, had begun to give way before more consolatory views of faith and piety. In his own fine language, the arrows with which his “panting side was charged” with “gentle force” had been extracted from the “stricken deer.” In June 1765 he repaired to Huntingdon, where he settled in lodgings, attended by a man servant who had followed him from his last residence out of pure attachment. For four months he continued alone among strangers; for although he was occasionally visited by a [7:7:437] few neighbours, he rather declined than .sought society; ' and the consequence was, that his spirits began again to sink. He found himself, he says, “like a traveller in the midst of an inhospitable desert, without affriend to comfort or a guide to direct him.” Both of these, however, were soon supplied to him-in the, person of Mr Unwin,, the son of the clergyman of the place, who, struck with Cowper’s interesting appearance at church, introduced himself to his acquaintance, and finally brought him as a boarder into the bosom of his own,amiable family. This was the most fortunate event which could have happened to the poet. ,The religious sentiments of the Unwins were peculiarly in unison with his own; and their routine of life was in every respect calculated to gratify his religious .zeal, to restore to his feeble nerves their wonted tension, and to his mind that serenity and repose which, if not perfect calm, was as near an approach to it as could well be expected in one so singularly constituted. After the death of Mľ Unwin, senior, in 1767, he accompanied Mrs Unwin and her daughter to a new residence which they bad chosen at Olney, in Buckinghamshire. Here he formed an intimate friendship with the Rev. John Newton, then curate of the parish, to∣whose collection of hymns he added several compositions of a very superior character, and which were published long before he was publicly known as a votary of the muses.

In 1770, Cowper’s fraternal feelings received a seyere shock by the death of his brother John, whom he tenderly loved. Three years afterwards his awful malady returned, accompanied with violent paroxysms of religious despondency, and his faculties were again doomed to suffer an eclipse, which lasted for about five years. During this melancholy period Mrs Unwin ministered to him with maternal patience, and tenderness. Upon his second recovery he busied himself with taming hares and making bird-cages, and, other similar amusements. Landscapedrawing also engaged his attention; and, what was of far more importance to the world, he began seriously and with assiduity to cultivate his poetic powers. The winter of 1780—81 was spent in preparing a volume for the press, consisting of Table Talk, Hope, The Progress of Error, Charity, &c. which was published in 1782. Its reception was far below its merits, but the expectations of the author were modest, and he can scarcely be said to have been disappointed when it is known that he ranked Dr Johnson and Benjamin Franklin among his zealous admirers. Their authority was certainly a sufficient balanceweight against that of the sapient critic who, in reviewing the volume, remarked, that Cowper was a good pious man, but destitute of one spark of poetic fire. When we take into consideration the character of that school of poetry which was almost universally cultivated and read from the time of Pope to the advent of Cowper, it is not at all surprising that the latter should have failed to make an immediate general impression. His poems displayed a wide departure from the dogmas of that school. The versification was deficient in that polish and harmony where sound is too often introduced as a substitute for vigour and strength. There was a familiarity of diction, a colloquial style of expression, which was quite original, and little likely to obtain quarter with those who had been so long habituated, to consider sonorous grandiloquence as an indispensable requisite in poetry. There can be no doubt, however, that although Ċowper’s verses wanted “the long resounding march,” they had no lack of the “energy divine.” The rind was rough and unpromising, but it inclosed the genuine fruit of the Hesperides.

In the,same year in which Cowper published his first volume, an addition was made to the. family circle of Olney, by the arrival of an elegant and accomplished lady, the widow of Sir Robert Austin. This acquaintance proved very delightful to the poet. She had wit, gaiety, agreeable manners, and elegant taste. At her suggestion Cowper began his great original poem the Task, and also the translation of Homer. Mrs Unwin, however, grew jealous of the influence which Lady Austin had obtained over the mind of the poet, and it became necessary for him at last to sacrifice her society. In 1784 the Task appeared, and completely established his fame. The occasion which gave rise to it was exceedingly trivial. Lady Austin bad requested him to write a piece in blank verse, and gave him for its subject a thing next to her, namely, the sofa. This he expanded into one of the finest moral poems our language has produced. It is written in blank verse as desired; and though in that respect it resembles Milton’s, it is nevertheless original and highly characteristic. It is not too stately for familiar description, nor too depressed for sublime and elevated imagery. If it has any fault, it is that of being too much laden with idiomatic expression; a fault which the author, in the rapidity with which his ideas and his utterance seem to have flowed, very naturally incurred. In this poem his fancy disported with the most excursive freedom. The poet enlarges upon his topics, and confirms his argument by every variety of illustration. But he never dwells upon them too long, and leaves off in such a manner, that it seems it was in his power to have said more. The arguments of the poem are various. The works of nature, the associations with which they exhibit themselves, the designs of Providence, and the passions of men. Of one advantage the writer has amply availed himself. The work not being rigidly confined to any precise subject, he has indulged himself in all the laxity and freedom of a miscellaneous poem; yet he has still adhered so faithfully to the general laws of congruity, that whether he inspires the softer affections into his reader, or delights him with keen and playful raillery, or discourses on the ordinary manners of human nature, or holds up the bright pictures of religious consolation to his mind, he adopts, at pleasure, a diction just and appropriate, equal in elevation to the sacred effusions of pious rapture, and sufficiently easy and familiar for descriptions of domestic life; skilful alike in soaring without effort, and in descending without meanness. He who desires to put into the hands of youth a poem which, not destitute of poetical embellishment, is yet free from all matter of a licentious tendency, will find in the Task a book adapted to bis purpose. It would be absurd and extravagant austerity to condemn those poetical productions in which love constitutes the leading feature. That passion has in every age been the concernment of life, the theme of the poet, and the plot of the stage. Yet there is a kind of amorous sensibility, bordering on morbid enthusiasm, which the youthful mind too often imbibes from the glowing sentiments of the poets. Their genius describes, in the most splendid colours, the operations of a passion which requires rebuke rather than incentive, and lends to the most grovelling sensuality the enchantments of a rich and creative imagination. But in the Task of Cowper there is no licentiousness of description. All is grave, majestic, and moral. A vein of sober thinking pervades every page, and, in finished poetry, he describes the insufficiency and vanity of human pursuits. Not that he is always severe. He frequently enlivens the mind of his reader by sportive descriptions, and by representing, in elevated measures, ludicrous objects and circumstances, a .species of the mock heroic so admired in Phillips’ Splendid Shilling. The historical account he has given of chairs, in the first book of the Task, is a striking specimen of his powers of versification, and of his talent for humour in this latter style. The attention is however the most [7:7:438]detained by those passages in which the charms of rural life, and the endearments of domestic retirement, are described. The Task abounds with incidents, introduced as episodes, and interposing an agreeable relief to the grave and serious part of the poetry. His Crazy Kate is a description of the calamity of a disordered reason, admirably exact and affecting.

• ' She begs, an idle pin of all she meets.

What other poet would have introduced so minute a circumstance into his representation; and yet that minuteness constitutes its peculiar merit, and produces the happiest effect.

Of his talent for painting there cannot be a better specimen than his sketch of the melancholy man, probably drawn from what too faithful memory suggested of himself:

Look where he comes—in this embower’d alcove Stand close concealed, and see a statue move; Lips busy, and eyes fixt, foot falling slow, Arms hanging idly down, hands clasp’d below, Interpret to the marking eye distress, Such as its symptoms only can express.

That tongue is silent now ;—that silent tongue Could argue once, could jest or join the song, Could give advice, could censure or commend, Or charm the sorrows of a drooping friend. Renounced alike its office and its sport, Its brisker and its graver strains fall short; Both fall beneath a fever’s secret sway, And like a summer brook are past away.

Retirement-

His occasional poems are remarkably fine, and John Gilpin is one of the most humorous pieces in the language. His next work was a translation of the Iliad and Odyssey ĩrtto Miltonic blank verse. It is unjust to compare the version of Mr Pope with that of Mr Cowper. The merits of each are distinct and appropriate. Mr Cowper died of a severe and lingering illness, at East Dereham, in Norfolk, on the 25th of April 1800.