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glass to mark them. For this we are, no doubt, indebted to the multitude of our accommodations; for it was not possible to retain the hardiness that originally belonged to our race, under the delicate management of which, for many ages, we have been accustomed. It is observable, however, that though we have by these means lost much of our pristine vigour, our days are not the fewer. We live as long as those whom, on account of the sturdiness of their frame, the poets supposed to have been the progeny of oaks. Perhaps, too, they had but little feeling, and for that reason might be imagined to be so descended; for a very robust, athletic habit, seems inconsistent with much sensibility. But sensibility is the sine qua non of real happiness. If, therefore, our lives have been shortened, and if our feelings have been rendered more exquisite, as our habit of body has become more delicate, on the whole we have no cause to complain, but are rather gainers by our degeneracy."

In the beginning of June, 1788, an event occurred, which, though it had been long expected by Cowper and by all his friends, could not fail to make a deep impression upon his peculiarly sensitive mind. This was the death of his esteemed and venerable relation Ashly Cowper, Esq., Clerk of the Parliaments, and brother to Cowper's father, the last moments of whose life his daughter, Lady Hesketh, had watched over with the tenderest solicitude. In reply to an affectionate letter from his friend Mr. Hill, apprizing him of the event, he thus writes:-"Your letter brought me the first intelligence of the event it mentions. My last from Lady Hesketh gave me reason enough to expect it; but the certainty of it was unknown to me till I learned it by your information. If gradual decline, the consequence of great age, be a sufficient preparation of the mind to encounter such a loss, our minds were certainly prepared to meet it: yet to you I need not say that no preparation can supersede the feelings of the heart on such occasions. While our friends yet live, inhabitants of the same world with ourselves, they seem still to live to us-we are sure that they often think of us, and, however improbable it may seem, it is never impossible that we may see each other once again. But the grave, like a great gulph, swallows all such expectations, and in the moment when a beloved friend sinks into it, a thousand tender recollections awaken a regret that will be felt in spite of all reasonings, and let our warnings have been what they may. My dear uncle's death awakened in me many reflections, which, for a time, sunk my spirits. A man like him would have been

mourned had he doubled the age he reached. At any age his death would have been felt as a loss that no survivor could repair. And though it was not probable that, for my own part, I should ever see him more, yet the consciousness that he still lived, was a comfort to me. Let it comfort us now, that we have lost him only at a time when nature could afford him to us no longer; that as his life was blameless, so was his death without anguish, and that he is gone to heaI know not that human life, in its most prosperous state, can present anything to our wishes half so desirable as such a close of it."

ven.

In another letter, he again writes;—" We have indeed lost one who has not left his like in the present generation of our family; and whose equal, in all respects, no future generation of it will probably produce. I often think what a joyful interview there has been between him and some of his friends who went before him. The truth of the matter is, my dear, they are happy ones, and we shall never be entirely so ourselves till we have joined the party. Can there be anything so worthy of our warmest wishes as to enter on an eternal, unchangeable state, in blessed fellowship and communion with those whose society we valued most, and for the best reasons, while they continued with us? A few steps more through a vain, foolish world, and this happiness will be yours. But I earnestly hope the end of thy journey is not near. For of all that live, thou art one whom I can least spare; for thou also art one who shall not leave thy equal

behind thee."

The state of Cowper's mind at this period will be discovered by the following extract from a letter to his friend Mr. Bull, who appears to have solicited him for some original hymns, to be used by him probably on some public occasion. "Ask possibilities, and they shall be performed; but ask not hymns from a man suffering with despair as I do. I would not sing the Lord's song were it to save my life, banished as I am, not to a strange land, but to a remoteness from his presence, in comparison to which the distance from east to west is no distance is vicinity and cohesion. I dare not, either in prose or verse, allow myself to express a frame of mind which I am conscious does not belong to me; least of all can I venture to use the language of absolute resignation, lest, only counterfeiting, I should, for that very reason, be taken strictly at my word, and lose all my remaining comfort. Can there not be found, among the translations of Madame Guion, somewhat that might serve the purpose? I

should think there might. Submission to the will of Christ, my memory tells me, is a theme that pervades them all. If so, your request is performed already; and if any alteration in them should be necessary, I will, with all my heart, make it. I have no objection to giving the graces of a foreigner an English dress, but insuperable ones to all false pretences and affected exhibitions of what I do not feel."

Several of Cowper's correspondents, at this time, again strongly urged him to write a poem on the Slave Trade. The following extracts will show that he was unwilling to give a refusal, though he could by no means prevail upon himself to accede to their wishes.. "Twice or thrice, before your request came, have I been solicited to write a poem on the cruel, odious, and disgusting subject of Negro Slavery. But besides that it would be in some sort treason against Homer to abandon him for any other matter, I felt myself so much hurt in my spirits the moment I entered on the contemplation of it, that I have at last determined, absolutely, to have nothing more to do with it. There are some scenes of horror on which my imagination has dwelt not without some complacency; but then they are such scenes as God, not man, produces. In earthquakes, high winds, tempestuous seas, there is a grand as well as a terrible. But when man is tempted to disturb, there is such meanness in the design, and such cruelty in the execution, that I both hate and despise the whole operation, and feel it a degradation of poetry to employ her in the description of it. I hope, also, that the generality of my countrymen have more generosity in their nature than to want the fiddle of verse to go before them in the performance of an act to which they are invited by the loudest calls of humanity. I shall rejoice if your friend, influenced by what you told him of my present engagements shall waive his application to me for a poem on this revolting subject. I account myself honoured by his intention to solicit one, and it would give me pain to refuse him, which inevitably I shall be constrained to do. The more I have considered it, the more I have convinced myself that it is not a promising theme for verse, at least to me. General censure on the iniquity of the practice will avail nothing. The world has been overwhelmed with such remarks already, and to particularize all the horrors of it, were an employment for the mind, both of the poet and of his readers, of which they would necessarily soon grow weary. For my own part, I cannot contemplate the subject very nearly, without a degree of abhorrence that affects my spirits, and sinks them below

the pitch requisite for success in verse. Lady Hesketh recommended it to me some months since, and then I declined it for those reasons, and for others which I need not now mention."

The close attention that Cowper found it necessary to pay to his Homer, left him, at this period, but little time for any other engagement. Adverting to this, he thus writes to Mr. Newton" It is a comfort to me that you are so kind as to make allowance for me, in consequence of my being so busy a man. The truth is, that could I write with both hands, and with both at the same time,-verse with one, and prose with the other,-1 should not, even so, be able to despatch both my poety and my arrears of correspondence faster than I have need. The only opportunities that I can find for conversing with distant friends are in the early hour, (and that sometimes reduced to half a one,) before breakfast. Neither am I exempt from hinderances, which, while they last, are insurmountable, especially one, by which I have been occasionally a sufferer all my life-an inflammation of the eyes; which has often disabled me from all sorts of scribbling. When I tell you that an unanswered letter troubles my conscience, in some degree, like a crime, you will think me endued with a most heroic patience, who have so long submitted to that trouble on account of yours, not answered yet. But the truth is, that I have been much engaged. Homer, you know, affords me constant employment, besides which I have rather, what may be called, considering the privacy in which I have long lived, a numerous correspondence: to one of my friends in particular, a near and much beloved relation, I write weekly, and sometimes twice in the week; nor are these my only excuses; the sudden changes of the weather have much affected me, and have often made me wholly incapable of writing."

The summer of 1788 was remarkably hot and dry, and to show the manner in which it affected Cowper's mind we give the following extract from a letter to one of his correspondents:" It has pleased God to give us rain, without which, this part of the country at least, must soon have become a desert. The goodness and power of God are never, (I believe,) so universally acknowledged as at the end of a long drought. Man is naturally a self-sufficient animal, and in all concerns that seem to be within the sphere of his own ability, thinks little, or not at all, of the need he always has of protection and furtherance from above. But he is sensible that the clouds will not assemble at his bidding, and that

though they do assemble, they will not fall in showers, because he commands them. When, therefore, at last the blessing descends, you shall hear, even in the streets, the most irreligious and thoughtless with one voice exclaim,—Thank God! Confessing themselves indebted to his power, and willing, at least as far as words go, to give Him the glory. I can hardly doubt, therefore, that the earth is sometimes parched, and the crops endangered, in order that the multitude may not want a memento to whom they owe them; nor absolutely forget the power on which we all depend for all things. The summer is leaving us at a rapid rate, as indeed do all the seasons, and though I have marked their flight often, I know not which is the swiftest. Man is never so deluded as when he dreams of his own duration. The answer of the old patriarch to Pharaoh may be adopted by every man at the close of the longest life. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my pilgrimage.' Whether we look back from fifty, or from twice fifty, the past appears equally a dream; and we can only be said truly to have lived, while we have been profitably employed. Alas, then! making the necessary deductions, how short is life! Were men in general to save themselves all the steps they take to no purpose, or to a bad one, what numbers, who are now active and thoughtless, would become sedentary and serious."

In the latter part of July, 1788, Mr. and Mrs. Newton paid Cowper a visit at Weston; and the pleasure it afforded him, will, with the state of his mind on the occasion, be seen by the following extract from a letter addressed to Mr. Newton, after his return." I rejoice that you and yours reached London safe, especially when I reflect that you performed your journey on a day so fatal, as I understand, to others travelling the same road. I found those comforts in your visit which have formerly sweetened all our interviews, in part restored. I knew you, knew you for the same shepherd who was sent to lead me out of the wilderness into the pasture, where the Chief Shepherd feeds his flock, and felt my sentiments of affectionate friendship for you the same as ever. But one thing was still wanting, and that thing the crown of all. I shall find it in God's time if it be not lost for ever. When I say this, I say it trembling: for at what time soever comfort may come, it will not come without its attendant evil: and whatever good things may occur in the interval, I have sad forebodings of the event, having learned by experience that I was born to be persecuted with peculiar fury, and assured by believing, that such as my lot has been, it will be

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