cellinus, as compared to that of Cicero or of Livy. A perpetual effort and struggle is made to supply the place of vigour; garish and dazzling colours are substituted for chaste ornament; and the hideous distortions of weakness for native strength. In my humble opinion, the study of Cowper's prose may, on this account, be as useful in forming the taste of young people as his poetry."

Poets have almost invariably been charged with adulation, whenever they have ventured to eulogise an individual, however much he may have been distinguished by his virtues and his talents. In many cases, they have undoubtedly richly merited this censure; but there are some honourable exceptions, and amongst this class Cowper is pre-eminently distinguished. Of this wicked and foolish practice he had the utmost abhorrence; and in some instances it may be doubted whether he did not carry his aversion to flattery, almost to an opposite extreme; withholding praise where he knew it was due. The following lines occur almost at the commencement of his Table Talk. After painting the portrait of that most virtuous monarch, George the Third, in language as just as it is beautiful, he abruptly exclaims,

"Guard what you say; the patriotic tribe
Will sneer, and charge you with a bribe-
The worth of his three kingdoms I defy
To lure me to the baseness of a lie:
And of all lies, (be that one poet's boast,)
The lie that flatters, I abhor the most."

- a bribe!

In the character of Cowper there was not the slightest particle of ostentation; on no occasion did he assume any airs of consequence; he never aimed, or wished to be what he was not. Every thing in the shape of affectation was the object of his disgust. He loved simplicity without rudeness, and detested that squeamish mimicry of fine feeling which

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. Every thing 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,

Yet wanting sensibility, the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path;
But he that has humanity, forewarned,
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.
Ye, therefore, who love mercy, teach your sons
To love it too. The spring-time of our years
Is soon dishonoured and defiled in most

By budding ills, that ask a prudent hand

To check them. But, alas! none sooner shoots,

If unrestrained, into luxuriant growth

Than cruelty, most devilish of them all!

Mercy, to him that shows it, is the rule

And righteous limitation of its art,

By which Heaven moves in pardoning guilty man;

And he that shews none, being ripe in years,
And conscious of the outrage he commits,

Shall seek it, and not find it, in his turn.
Distinguished much by reason, and still more
By our capacity of grace divine,

From creatures that exist but for our sake,
Which, having served us, perish, we are held
Accountable: and God, some future day,
Will reckon with us roundly for the abuse

Of what he deems no mean or trivial trust!

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
Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume;

And we are weeds without it. All constraint
Except what wisdom lays on evil men,
Is evil hurts the faculties, impedes

Their progress in the road of science; blinds
The eyesight of discovery; and begets
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,
Thee I account still happy, and the chief
Among the nations, seeing thou art free,
My native nook of earth! Thy clime is rude,
Replete with vapours, and disposes much
All hearts to sadness, and none more than mine;
Yet, being free, I love thee for the sake

Of that one feature, can be well content,
Disgraced as thou hast been, poor as thou art,
To seek no sublunary rest beside.

But once enslaved, farewell. I could endure
Chains nowhere patiently; and chains at home,
Where I am free by birthright, not at all!"

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;
Let magistrates alert perform their parts,
Not skulk, or put on a prudential mask,
As if their duty was a desperate task.
Let active laws apply the needful curb,
To guard the peace that riot would disturb;

And liberty, preserved from wild excess,
Shall raise no feuds for armies to suppress.
When Tumult lately burst his prison door,
And set plebeian thousands in a roar,
When he usurped Authority's just place,
And dared to look his master in the face;
When the rude rabble's watch-word was- Destroy!'
And blazing London seemed a second Troy !
Liberty blushed, and hung her drooping head-
Beheld their progress with the deepest dread;
Blushed that effects like these she could produce,
Worse than the deeds of galley-slaves let loose;
She loses in such storms her very name,

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,

Calls the delightful scenery all his own :
His are the mountains, and the valleys his,
And the resplendent rivers: his to enjoy
With a propriety that none can feel.
But who, with filial confidence inspired,
Can lift to heaven an unpresumptuous eye,
And smiling sayMy Father made them all!