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THE LIFE OF WILLIAM COWPER.

Ir is with a singular emotion that we have jotted down the words, "THE LIFE OF WILLIAM COWPER." The terms seem almost a contradiction. The word "life" usually suggests ideas of bustling energy, and gladness. But, as applied to an existence which was, on the whole, a long tissue of disappointment, misery, or despair, the word seems a misnomer. Shall we not rather call it "The living death for seventy years of William Cowper"?

The author of "The Task" was born on the 15th of November (an appropriate birth-time for one whose years were all winters, and each of his months a November) 1731, in the rectory, Great Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire. He was descended from an ancient and highly honourable house. His father was John Cowper, D.D., son of Spencer Cowper, one of the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas, nephew of Lord Chancellor Cowper, and rector of Great Berkhamstead. His mother was Anne, daughter of Roger Donne, Esq., of Ludham Hall, Norfolk-of the same family with the celebrated Dr Donne, the quaint poet and eloquent sermon-writer-the friend of Walton and of George Herbert. This lady, whose memory, as the mother of the poet Cowper and the heroine of the lines "On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture," shall ever be so warmly cherished by the world, seems to have been a person of the most amiable dispositions. Her picture, which now lies before us, expresses much feminine delicacy, and not a

little of that trembling sensibility and timid anxiety which assumed a darker form in her son. She died in 1737, at the age of thirty-four, in childbirth, leaving, of several children, only William and a brother. Young as Cowper was, he felt her loss keenly-wept bitter tears as he saw her hearse slowly leaving the parsonage, and never passed a week, he assures us, and scarce a day, without thinking of her. Soon after his mother's decease he was sent, at the age of six years, to a boarding-house, and here, originally of a morbid disposition, deprived of her watchful and gentle guidance, and flung abruptly among strangers, he imbibed the first prelibation of that deep cup of misery which his whole after-life was employed in drinking. The school was at Market Street, in Hertfordshire, and was kept by a Dr Pitman. The character of the master is not recorded; but the society of the rude boys, and the general atmosphere of the life pursued, disgusted and repelled Cowper. He was continually contrasting the rough treatment he met with in this "Do-the-boys'-hall" with the tenderness of his dear mother and the elegant comforts of his native roof. One brutal lad, especially, conceived a wicked delight in maltreating him. He "fancied" him, as a demon might fancy a special victim of his ire, and treated. him with a revolting barbarity, which haunted Cowper's memory till the latest hour of his life, came back upon his dreams, and deepened the dark horrors of his derangement. He says, "I well remember being afraid to lift my eyes upon him higher than his knees, and that I knew him better by his shoe-buckles than by any other part of his dress. May the Lord pardon him, and may we meet in glory!" This cruel usage was carried on for a while in secret, the victim being afraid to reveal, lest he should aggravate it; but it was at last discovered. The wretch was expelled, and Cowper was taken away from the school. Had it continued a little longer, we had not now been employed upon this biography; the poor boy would have sunk into hopeless idiocy, or died of a broken heart. And it had been far better for him, humanly speaking, that he had!

As it was, he remained two years at this seminary—long enough to have his native tendency to mental disease greatly

increased, as well as to derive that profound aversion to public schools afterwards recorded in "Tirocinium." On his removal his eyes became affected with specks, and he was in danger of losing his sight. He was placed for two years with an eminent oculist, "to no good purpose," by his own account, so far as education or religion were concerned. His eyes, however, were much relieved, although they remained rather weak and liable to inflammation till the close of his life. At this period he describes himself as exceedingly depraved for so young a boy, and given especially to the "infernal art of lying" a statement we are disposed, with Southey, to take cum grano salis. His views of himself were all along dismally discoloured. His moral eyesight contended with more numerous and thicker specks than his bodily; and if he had learned to lie, it was probably in self-defence against his cruel foe at Market Street, so that his falsehood may be compared to the feints made by the poor chased hare, in order to secure her escape from the hounds pressing on her haunches. Latterly, no man was ever more truthful, both in word and deed, in life and in poetry; and well might he say, as in "Expostulation".

"And truth alone, where'er my life be cast,

In scenes of plenty, or the pining waste,

Shall be my chosen theme, my glory to the last.”

At ten years of age he was sent to Westminster School. His residence there, on the whole, was a pleasurable passage in his history, and continued to smile back on him, like one select sunny spot upon a traveller, through an atmosphere of clouds and darkness. He had, indeed, then, as in every other portion of his life, some nervous apprehensions to contend with. His special hallucination at this time was a notion that he was consumptive, and was soon to die. Such dreams are, we suspect, not uncommon among boys of nervous and imaginative temperament; at least we know of one of this cast, who, about the age of twelve, was made miserable for many months by precisely the same terror. Cowper felt, however, that this fear was a "messenger of the Lord" to him, and that it had "perfectly convinced him that he was

mortal"—a truth, sooth to say, which many of the young are unable to realise. Otherwise, when at Westminster School, he was happier than at any other period of his life. He was diligent in his studies, and obtained a highly creditable standing as a scholar. He loved the usual schoolboy sports, especially cricket and football. He loved still better the solitary rambles, which holidays permitted him, into the country, where the future author of "The Task " might be seen plucking the scarlet hips, climbing fences in chase of the hightowering haw, satisfying his hunger in the turnip-field, rejoicing at the discovery of some quiet and secret nook, where the softest of sloes or the plumpest of brambles were to be found-sitting silent on the stile, and watching the landscape, with the Thames stealing slowly through it like an incognito king, and the evening light betraying his splendid secret, as it gleamed on the waters--or asleep at noon in some cool retreat, with a broad oak, old almost as that of Yardley, shadowing his plain but pleasing features into an aspect like poetry. Coming back from such rambles-

"No sofa then awaited his return,

No sofa then he needed "____

but kind and congenial spirits were ready to mingle their minds with his, and to make the evenings of his holidays as delightful as the morns. Seldom has there met in any school a more brilliant assemblage of persons, afterwards renowned, than there did then at Westminster. There was the celebrated wit, Bonnell Thornton. There was Lloyd, the unfortunate but lively versifier, who at one time almost vied in popularity with Churchill. There was Churchill himself, the rugged, robust, and fearless satirist, who wasted on temporary topics powers of great compass and variety-who, in a species of reckless despair, threw away a glorious constitution—whose rapidity of production and manly vigour of verse had been unequalled since Dryden, and who, with all his faults, lived and died an honest man

"The scourge of impostors, and terror of quacks."

There was Cumberland, the finical and jealous, but highly