for sights; and having in vain asked their brother to accompany them, they set out and traversed the streets that night to see what could be seen. When they returned to their brother's house in Saville Row, he greeted them with. "Well, ladies, I am glad you were so pleased." They laughed, and replied, Why, this is just what you said to us thirty years ago

The incurious temper which equally characterized Cowper and his friend, was strangely combined in the former with a physical restlessness, which, till he was more than thirty years old, made it almost essential to his comfort to be perpetually in motion 18. This, which disqualified him for the practical labours of the desk, must have disinclined him from the sedentary study of his profession, and might possibly have disabled him for it, if he had otherwise been willing to have applied himself seriously thereto. Thurlow, meantime, who, with a strong head and strong body, possessed also an invincible strength of purpose, applied himself determinately to the business of life. One evening they were drinking tea together at a lady's house in Bloomsbury, when Cowper,.. contrasting in melancholy foresight his own conduct and consequent prospects with those of his fellow idler and giggler in former days,.. said to him, "Thurlow, I am nobody, and shall be always nobody, and you will be chancellor. You shall provide for me when you are!" He smiled, and replied, "I surely will." "These ladies," said Cowper 66 are witnesses!" The future chancellor still smiled, and answered, "Let them be so, for I will certainly do it1."

This conversation occurred in 1762. A letter of Cowper's, written in the same year, shows in what state of mind he then regarded his own situation 20.

TO CLOTWORTHY ROWLEY, ESQ. AT TENDRING HALL, NEAR IPSWICH.

DEAR ROWLEY,

Your letter has taken me just in the crisis; to-morrow I set off for Brighthelmston, and there I stay till the winter brings us all to town again. This world is a shabby fellow, and uses 19 Hayley, ii 166.

18 Private Corr. i. 353. 20 This very curious and characteristic letter, which except a Latin one already noticed, and addressed to the same friend) is the earliest of Cowper's that has yet appeared, is now for the first time published.

us ill; but a few years hence there will be no difference between us and our fathers of the tenth generation upwards. I could be as splenetic as you, and with more reason, if I thought proper to indulge that humour; but my resolution is, (and I would advise you to adopt it,) never to be melancholy while I have a hundred pounds in the world to keep up my spirits. God knows how long that will be; but in the mean time Io Triumphe! If a great man struggling with misfortune is a noble object, a little man that despises them is no contemptible one; and this is all the philosophy I have in the world at present. It savours pretty much of the ancient Stoic; but till the Stoics became coxcombs, they were, in my opinion, a very sensible sect.

If my resolution to be a great man was half so strong as it is to despise the shame of being a little one, I should not despair of a house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, with all its appurtenances; for there is nothing more certain, and I could prove it by a thousand instances, than that every man may be rich if he will. What is the industry of half the industrious men in the world but avarice, and call it by which name you will, it almost always succeeds. But this provokes me, that a covetous dog who will work by candlelight in a morning, to get what he does not want, shall be praised for his thriftiness, while a gentleman shall be abused for submitting to his wants, rather than work like an ass to relieve them. Did you ever in your life know a man who was guided in the general course of his actions by any thing but his natural temper? And yet we blame each other's conduct as freely as if that temper was the most tractable beast in the world, and we had nothing to do but to twitch the rein to the right or the left, and go just as we are directed by others! All this is nonsense, and nothing better.

There are some sensible folks, who having great estates have wisdom enough too to spend them properly; there are others who are not less wise, perhaps, as knowing how to shift without 'em. Between these two degrees are they who spend their money dirtily, or get it so. If you ask me where they are to be placed who amass much wealth in an honest way, you must be so good as to find them first, and then I'll answer the question. Upon the whole, my dear Rowley, there is a degree of poverty that has no disgrace belonging to it; that degree of

it, I mean, in which a man enjoys clean linen and good company; and if I never sink below this degree of it, I care not if I never rise above it. This is a strange epistle, nor can I imagine how the devil I came to write it but here it is, such as it is, and much good may do you with it. I have no estate as it happens, so if it should fall into bad hands, I shall be in no danger of a commission of lunacy, Adieu! Carr is well, and gives his love to you. Yours ever,

Sept. 2, 1762

WM. COWPER.

When Cowper wrote this letter his little patrimony was in a course of regular diminution. It was not yet so reduced as to alarm him with the apprehension of coming to the last hundred, and arriving at that stage of poverty in which persons of a certain grade in society lose their caste, because they can no longer keep up the appearance which it requires. But the sands in an hour glass appear to run faster when they begin to run low, and that he then contemplated the possible exhaustion of his means is evident. There is no proof that this was one of the causes which concurred in bringing on his disease of mind; but that disease assumed a decided character in the following year; in spite of his philosophy there must have existed uneasiness enough on the score of his affairs to prevent any wholesome and natural cheerfulness, and forced hilarity leaves behind it a more hollow and aching sense of exhaustion than is consequent upon the excitement of wine, or even of more deleterious stimulants.

His spirits, when he was in health, were far more buoyant than ordinary men are blest with. The circumstances which tended to support them, and deferred the evil day, were the probable expectation which he had of obtaining some appointment through the influence of his connexions, the pleasure which he found in intellectual society, and the occasional occupation in which, owing to his intimacy with men of letters, he was engaged. But his literary friends were more likely to assist him in keeping up his classical acquirements, than to enlarge his knowledge, or strengthen his understanding. His own temper was so easy, and his mind, while under any control of reason, so playful, that he could not fail to be a favourite with his associates; and his amiable disposition made him always see their good qualities in the best light, and over

look their faults. But he was in dangerous company at this time; and his moral sense, acute as it was, and his religious belief,.. which however little it may then have influenced his heart, was firmly grounded in his understanding,.. might not always have preserved him from the effects of evil communications. He was removed from them just at the time when they were becoming most dangerous.

CHAPTER III.

COWPER'S LITERARY ASSOCIATES AND FRIENDS. BONNELL THORNTON. COLMAN. LLOYD.

THORNTON and Colman were the most distinguished of Cowper's associates when he began to reside in the Temple. The former was four years his senior, the latter two years his junior. With Thornton, therefore, who was elected from Westminster to Christ Church, when Cowper was twelve years old, he could have formed no intimacy at school; with Colman it was otherwise, Colman and Thornton had become bosom friends at Oxford, and all three were members of the Nonsense Club.

Bonnell Thornton was the son of an apothecary in Maiden Lane, London, and was intended by his father for the medical profession. His first attempts as an author appeared in "The Student, or Oxford and Cambridge Monthly Miscellany," printed at Oxford for Mr. Newberry of St. Paul's Churchyard; a name and address once as widely circulated with the histories of Goody Two Shoes and Giles Gingerbread, and other sixpenny books in gilt covers, as it has since been with Dr. James's powders and analeptic pills. Kit Smart was the principal conductor, and Wharton and Johnson were occasional contributors. Thornton afterwards commenced a periodical work, entitled "Have at ye all, or the Drury Lane Journal,” in rivalry, it is said, of Fielding's "Covent Garden Journal." Fielding's has been preserved, having been incorporated in his works; Thornton's remains have never been collected, and it is not known how long this Journal lasted: Mr. Alexander Chalmers had seen only twelve numbers. At the age of thirty he took the degree of Bachelor of Physic, and in the same year he and Colman began the "Connoisseur."

George Colman was born at Florence in 1733, when his

father was British resident at the Grand Duke of Tuscany's court; a sister of his mother was married to the once well known Pulteney, Earl of Bath. Like Thornton, he was on the foundation at Westminster, though not elected into the College there till a year or two after Thornton had left it. That he was made an accomplished Latin scholar there, is certain, and not less so that he must have acquired a competent knowledge of Greek; but by his own account he worked in vain at Hebrew, and would have made little progress in any thing if the old Busbeïan process had not been systematically applied. He was elected to Christ Church in 1751, and there, while yet an under graduate, commenced with Thornton, in January, 1754, the publication of the "Connoisseur.”

It was then the age of periodical essays. The "Rambler," which revived the taste for them, had been immediately followed by the "Adventurer;" that paper had not yet closed its course, and during its publication the "World" had been started with all the advantages that could be given it by the aid of noble and fashionable contributors. By such aid it had reached a sale little short of two thousand five hundred; thus exceeding what the "Spectator" had obtained. Some reliance the two friends must have placed upon the demand for this kind of light literature,.. light it had now become almost to the total exclusion of grave, or even serious matter1; but their main confidence was in each other and in themselves. Thornton had been one of the contributors to the "Adventurer"," and Colman, at the age of twenty, had there made what was probably his first appearance in public as a prose writer. Their humour and their talents were well adapted to what they had undertaken; and Beaumont and Fletcher present what is probably the only parallel instance of literary co-operation so complete, that the portions written by the respective parties are undistinguishable. Upon taking leave of the public, in the concluding number, they say, "We have not only joined in the work, taken together, but almost every single paper is

1 Johnson said that the Connoisseur' "wanted matter; and his opinion of the 'World' was not much higher."-Boswell, ii. 198.

2 The papers which Sir John Hawkins ascribed to Dr. Bathurst have been claimed for him. Mr. Chalmers had not the least doubt that they were his; and this opinion is strongly supported by internal evidence, which is in this instance more than ordinarily conclusive.