Lloyd and Colman's burlesque Odes. Lloyd on the favours shown in his Magazine to his friends Churchill of Scotch extraction by the mother's side. Churchill's dislike of Pope Descriptive poetry. Mason's reason for the structure of his first dramas. His dramas successful on the stage Mason's confession that he had been too much elated by success Spenser depreciated Cowper's mistake concerning Pope's intended epic poem Mr. Newton's opinion of alarming sermons Specimen of the manner in which Pope corrected his translation of Sweet Meat has Sour Sauce-a ballad by Cowper-on the Slave Trade ib. LIFE OF COWPER. CHAPTER I. COWPER'S BIRTH, FAMILY, AND EDUCATION. WILLIAM COWPER, the most popular poet of his generation, and the best of English letter-writers, was born on the 15th of November (old style), 1731, in the Rectory, at Great Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire. The place of his birth is remarkable in English history. The Mercian kings had a palace there; and it again became a royal residence under the first of the Plantagenets, who granted to the men and merchants thereof liberty to trade through all his lands of England and Normandy and Aquitain and Anjou, without paying either custom or exaction; and that they should be quit of all servile works, and be exempt from all tolls, and enjoy the same liberties, laws, and customs as in the time of Edward the Confessor; and that no market should be held within seven miles of the town. From Henry the First's time, the honour and castle of Berkhamstead went with the earldom of Cornwall. Twice they were granted to unfortunate favourites by Edward II. to Piers Gaveston, and by Richard II. to Robert de Vere. Cicely, Duchess of York and mother of the last of the Plantagenets, resided here during the latter years of her unhappy life; and from the time of her death, the honour of Berkhamstead has descended to the successive princes of Wales with the dukedom of Cornwall. Notable as these circumstances are, this little town will be more known in after ages as the birth-place of Cowper than for its connexion with so many historical personages who figured in the tragedies of old. s. c.-1. B We are told that the poet used playfully to moralize upon the pride of pedigree, and to say he believed one of his ancestors had migrated from Scotland in a very humble condition. It is not unlikely that he might have been willing to fancy himself related to a good old Scotch bishop of James the First's time, who was his namesake; but more than this, knowing the history of his own family, he could not have intended; and free as he was, and as every Christian ought to be, from the leaven of ancestral pride, it cannot be supposed that he was insensible to the value of a good name, in the hereditary sense of that word. There is a pleasure in tracing the parentage of an illustrious man as far as records and tradition afford any light, as there is in exploring the sources of a famous river; and no one will depreciate the humble labours of the genealogist, who knows how many useful pursuits are incidentally subserved by such researches. John Cowper of Strode, in the parish of Slingfield, Sussex, married Joan, the daughter and heiress of John Stanbridge, of the same parish, in the sixth year of Edward IV. 1465. This appears to be the first mention of a name which afterwards is found repeatedly among the sheriffs of London. Their descendant, Sir William Cowper, was created a baronet of Nova Scotia, and afterwards (in 1631-2) of England, and knighted at Theobald's in the following year. Ratling Court, in Nonington, Kent, was his seat at that time; and he is memorable for having erected a monument to Hooker in the neighbouring church of Bishopsbourne, more than thirty years after his death, with an epitaph of his own composed in verse. principles which Sir William declared in that epitaph, he maintained in evil days; during those days, he was imprisoned for his loyalty, in Ely House, with his eldest son: the son died The 1 In one of his letters he says that he was originally of Fifeshire, and that a family of his name still existed there. But Bishop Cooper was a native of Edinburgh; and families of that name are to be found wherever a Cooper, or Cow-keeper, or a general dealer (Kooper, Dutch) took the name of his occupation and transmitted it to his posterity. 2 She must have been a person of some consideration, for in a deed preparatory to this marriage, her estates were conveyed in trust to the Lord Maltravers; John Bourchier, Lord Berners (the translator of Froissart); Sir John Audley, Lord Audley, and Thomas St. Leger, esquire of the king's body. under his confinement; the father outlived his troubles, and "residing at his castle of Hertford, was famed for hospitality, charity, and other Christian virtues; often visiting his poor neighbours, and relieving them in private, according to their necessities." He died in 1664, at the great age of eighty-two. His grandson and successor, Sir William, was father of the first Earl Cowper, lord chancellor, and of Spencer3 Cowper, one of the judges of the court of Common Pleas. John Cowper, D.D. chaplain to George II., rector of Great Berkhamstead, and father of the poet, was the judge's second son, by his first wife, Judith Pennington. Dr. Cowper married Anne, daughter of Roger Donne, Esq. of Ludham Hall, in Norfolk; Donne, whose name and deserts, if his own works were forgotten, would be preserved by Izaak Walton, was of the same family. Through the Hippesleys of Throughley in Sussex, and the Pellats of Bolney in the same county, this lady was "descended from the several noble houses of West, Knollys, Carey, Bullen, Howard, and Mowbray; and so by four different lines from Henry III. King of England." "Distinctions of this nature," says the poet's friend and kinsman, Dr. Johnson, I can shed no additional lustre on the memory of Cowper: yet genius, however exalted, disdains not, while it boasts not, the splendour of ancestry; and royalty itself may be pleased, and perhaps benefited, by discovering its kindred to such piety, such purity, and such talents as his." 66 "I It is not, however, for her genealogy, however illustrious, that this lady is and will ever be remembered, but for being the mother of a poet who has embalmed her memory in everlasting verse. She died in 1737, at the age of thirty-four, in child-bed, leaving, of several children, only two sons. can truly say," said Cowper, nearly fifty years after her death, "that not a week passes (perhaps I might with equal veracity say a day) in which I do not think of her such was the impression her tenderness made upon me, though the opportunity she had for showing it was so short.". 3 This is a family name, derived from the marriage of William Cowper with the daughter of Thomas Spencer, of St. Peter's Cornhill, London, in the thirty-fourth of Henry VIII. Mrs. Cowper was buried in the chancel of her husband's church, where a monument was erected to her, bearing this epitaph, which was composed by her niece, afterwards Lady Walsingham. Here lies, in early years bereft of life, The best of mothers and the kindest wife; Pray'd Heaven to bless him with her latest breath. O stay awhile, and shed a friendly tear! These lines, though weak, are as herself, sincere. Cowper was old enough to feel his loss poignantly, and he has recorded his feelings on this occasion in the most beautiful of his minor poems. My mother! when I learn'd that thou wast dead, He was old enough, too, if not to understand the greatness of his loss, to be made sensible of its immediate consequences, by being sent at six years of age from home to a boardingschool, the first of those sad changes through which a gentle spirit has to pass in this uneasy and disordered world. His infancy is said to have been "delicate in no common degree," and his constitution to have discovered at a very early season its morbid tendency to diffidence, melancholy, and despair. Whatever may be the advantages of a school education for |