not unfrequently, either under the assumed garb of superior sanctity, or of ardent friendship, conceals the most pitiable imbecility and ignorance. It must be acknowledged that Cowper sometimes dipped his pen in gall. Some expressions the most bitterly sarcastic are to be found in his poems. Of his first volume it was said, by one of his friends, "There are many passages delicate, many sublime, many beautiful, many tender, many sweet, and many acrimonious." Cowper's satire, however, though keen and powerful as a whip of scorpions, was employed only to expose and punish the openly profligate, and the hypocritical professors of religion. Everything in the shape of deception he ever held in perfect detestation. The castigation of vice, of ignorance, or of dissimulation, was his object, when he became a satirist. If he held up philosophy to ridicule, it was that glare of false philosophy, which, instead of being beneficial to men, only led them from the plain and beaten track of truth, into paths of error and misery. He never wantonly, for the sake only of his own gratification, inflicted his satiric lash on a single individual. He became a satirist, not to give vent to a waspish, revengeful, and malicious disposition, (to feelings of this kind he was an entire stranger,) but for the same purpose as the holy prophets of old were satirists to expose, in mercy to mankind, the hideous deformity of those vices, which have ever been the fruitful parents of misery to mankind. The exquisite sensibility of Cowper, and the real goodness of his disposition, with his entire abhorrence of cruelty, whether practised by man towards his own species, or towards any part of the Creator's works, are evinced by the following striking lines. "I would not enter on my list of friends, Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. By budding ills, that ask a prudent hand Than cruelty, most devilish of them all! By which Heaven moves in pardoning guilty man; From creatures that exist but for our sake, Liberty has always been the soul-inspiring theme of poets. On no subject has the muse sung in sweeter strains, or towered to more sublime heights. Cowper has given ample proofs that his muse felt all the fire of this ennobling theme. In his Table Talk, some beautiful lines will be found on this interesting subject, so dear to the heart of every Englishman; but in his most masterly production, the Task, he thus sings ""Tis liberty alone that gives the flower Except what wisdom lays on evil men, Their progress in the road of science; blinds In those that suffer it a sordid mind,— Bestial-a meagre intellect, unfit To be the tenant of man's noble form. Thee, therefore, still, blameworthy as thou art, The liberty of Cowper was not, however, that lawless restraint which, under the sacred name of liberty, would burst asunder all those bands that hold society together, and introduce confusion infinitely more to be dreaded than the most absolute despotism. It was not the wild and unrestrained liberty of the ferocious mob; it was the liberty that is compatible with wholesome restraint, and with the due administration of law. It was the liberty not of disorder but of discipline, as will be seen by the following beautiful lines "Let Discipline employ her wholesome arts; And fierce Licentiousness should bear the blame!" Powerful as were the charms of subjects like these to Cowper, there were others of a different character which he held as more dear, and ever regarded as more important. Like his great predecessor, Milton, he had made the sacred scriptures his constant study; not so much because he admired the sublime imagery of the holy penmen, (alive as he was to their beauties in this respect,) as because he felt the full force of divine truth upon his heart; which, notwithstanding the severe pressure of his malady, would sometimes yield him an interval of pleasure. It was undoubtedly on one of these happy occasions that he penned the following lines, so strikingly descriptive of the refined pleasure with which the Christian can view the works of nature. "He looks abroad into the varied field Of nature; and though poor, perhaps, compared With those whose mansions glitter in his sight, Whose eyes they fill with tears of holy joy; وو Although Cowper, towards the close of his life, before he received his Majesty's pension, owing to the heavy expenses occasioned by his own and Mrs. Unwin's illness, was scarcely able to keep his expenditure within the limits of his income, yet he was never once heard to complain, nor even to indulge the slightest disposition to be otherwise than contented in the station where Providence had placed him. Writing to his intimate friend, Mr. Hill, on one occasion, whom he appears to have made his treasurer, he remarks:-" Your tidings respecting the slender pittance yet to come, are, as you observe, of a melancholy cast. Not being gifted, however, by nature with the means of acquiring much, it is well that she has given me a disposition to be contented with little. I have now been so many years habituated to small matters, that I should probably find myself incommoded by greater, and, may I but be enabled to shift, as I have been hitherto, unsatisfied wishes will not trouble me much." 66 On another occasion, to the same individual he writes:"I suppose you are sometimes troubled on my account, but you need not. I have no doubt that it will be seen, when my days are closed, that I served a Master who would not suffer me to want anything that was good for me. He said to Jacob, I will surely do thee good;' and this he said not for his sake only, but for ours also, if we trust in him. This thought relieves me from the greatest part of the distress I should else suffer in my present circumstances, and enables me to sit down peacefully upon the wreck of my fortune." The same sentiment is still more forcibly expressed in the following lines : "Fair is the lot that's cast for me; For whom the Lord vouchsafes to plead." Perhaps no individual ever felt more fully the power of religion in his heart, or embodied it more completely in his life, than Cowper. The apprehensions, for his ultimate safety, by which he was so continually harassed, depressive as was their influence on his mind, never relaxed, in any degree, that severe watchfulness which religion had taught him to exercise over his thoughts and conduct. On the contrary, they seem rather to have operated as a continual check upon those corrupt inclinations which are common to our fallen_nature; and to which, even Cowper, was not a stranger. It would be ridiculous to say he had no imperfections; he felt them; he often mourned over them, and the vivid perception he had of them, associated, as it invariably was, with a powerful constitutional tendency to melancholy, often filled him with the greatest anxiety and dread. His conceptions of the purity of that sublime religion taught us in the gospel, and of the paramount importance of a holy life in its professors, were such as led him to regard the least deviation from the strict line of christian duty, in his own case at least, as an entire disqualification for the reception of spiritual comfort. No individual's conscience was ever more tremblingly alive to the importance of habitual watchfulness and uniform consistency of conduct. He could make ample allowances for the imperfections of others, but nothing could prevail upon him to make any for his own. The notice we have already taken of Cowper's productions, renders it unnecessary that we should view them any further in detail. We cannot, however, suppress the following admirable observations of an anonymous critic, subjoined to |